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Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Mrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . Description Rating Title Osborne , Barbara Description Oral History of Barbara Osborne , Interviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . , September 25 , 2010 Audio Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / audio / Osborne _ Barbara . mp3 Transcript Link http : / / coroh . oakridgetn . gov / corohfiles / Transcripts _ and _ photos / Osborne _ Barbara . doc Collection Name COROH Interviewee Osborne , Barbara Interviewer Hamilton - Brehm , Anne Marie Type audio Language English Subject Oak Ridge ( Tenn . ) Date of Original 2010 Format doc , mp3 Length 2 hours , 22 minutes File Size 129 . 53 MB Source Center for Oak Ridge Oral History Location of Original Oak Ridge Public Library Rights Copy Right by the City of Oak Ridge , Oak Ridge , TN 37830 Disclaimer : " This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government . Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof , nor any of their employees , makes any warranty , express or implied , or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy , completeness , or usefulness of any information , apparatus , product , or process disclosed , or represents that process , or service by trade name , trademark , manufacturer , or otherwise do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement , recommendation , or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof . The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof . " The materials in this collection are in the public domain and may be reproduced without the written permission of either the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History or the Oak Ridge Public Library . However , anyone using the materials assumes all responsibility for claims arising from use of the materials . Materials may not be used to show by implication or otherwise that the City of Oak Ridge , the Oak Ridge Public Library , or the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History endorses any product or project . When materials are to be used commercially or online , the credit line shall readInterviewed by Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , Ph . D . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : It is September 25th , 2010 , and this is Anne Marie Hamilton - Brehm , the Coordinator for the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History interviewing Barbara Osborne in her home . Barbara , your family came to Oak Ridge from Michigan in 1949 . What was your family doing prior to arriving in Oak Ridge and why did you move to Oak Ridge ? Mrs . Osborne : We lived in Birmingham , Michigan , where my father worked either in Detroit or in Pontiac , depending on the office that he was in . After the war , the jobs were all given to the veterans , where he had not been allowed to go into the military because his work was too important , so he had to find another job . This is just - they said it wasn 't fair , but this sort of thing just happened . A friend of his who was in Oak Ridge wrote him and said come and apply for a particular job that was open here . So he came down , applied for the job , got it and came back and moved us to Tennessee . We had never - I had never been out of the state of Michigan before , so it was very different . I heard all sorts of wild tales from kids at school and wild tales about what Oak Ridge was going to be like : mud and people making booze in the bathtub . And part of this was true . Mud was true , but the other I never found . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : [ laughter ] What are your memories ? You came to Oak Ridge when you were in high school , and then right after you moved here , the city gates opened . What are your memories of the opening of the city gates and the parade ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , huge crowds ! I think the only people that I know of that weren 't there were the rest of my family . I 'm the only one from my family that went to the parade , and I don 't know why they didn 't go . I guess they just didn 't want to get stuck in a crowd . But I went down , and I was standing in front of the old Jackson Square Post Office watching these movie stars go by , and they looked so glamorous , and it was just excitement . I had watched Queen for a Day , which you 're way too young to know about , so seeing Jack Bailey in person was really exciting , and of course Rod Cameron was every bit as gorgeous as he was on the screen , to say nothing of Marie McDonald , and she had a beautiful fur coat on . That was when it was okay to have a fur coat . So it was just really , really exciting . And the bands were good , and , you know , just everything , the whole atmosphere was just wonderful . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I 'd never heard a real southern accent before , and I 'd never heard an East Tennessee accent . And a lot of them had never heard a Michigan accent , which I had never thought of as being an accent . The first day I was in school here , I could not understand anything anybody said - any of the students said to me . I could understand the teachers , but I couldn 't understand the students . So when I was being shown around the school by one of the girls , I never did understand where she said the lunchroom was , and so the first day I went without eating lunch because I was too embarrassed to ask , try to ask anybody else , " Where do I go to find the cafeteria ? " Because I just simply couldn 't understand what they were saying to me , and I was scared to death , and you know , just your usual teenage angst I guess . Mrs . Osborne : Back then , not everybody had a car like they do now , because there wasn 't much of any place to go except the Snow White Drive - In , which was the headquarters for all dating purposes at that point . If you had a date , you usually wound up there getting something to eat , and if you didn 't have a date , you wound up there with friends , driving around to see who did have a date [ laughter ] , and that 's just where it was happening at this point , which is very - it 's so much like Happy Days , to be honest , and so peacefully innocent compared to today 's happenings , I think . If somebody drank , it was a big thing , not a common thing . You know , it was just , " Oh , what a terrible boy that must be . " You certainly never wanted to date anybody like that , where , I don 't know , standards seem to have changed a whole lot . Mrs . Osborne : Well , they brought it in with them , however they could . There were people that made regular runs over to North Carolina to try to furnish alcohol for a party , and they would cover up the stuff in their trunk however they could , hide it under spare tires , I don 't know . One of the stories was about hiding the bottles of liquor under a sleeping baby in a baby bed in the back seat of the car , and of course you didn 't want to disturb the baby by searching under there , so they managed - I don 't know if the child , how the child could sleep on top of it , but obviously it must have been well padded . And supposedly that really happened . But some people got caught and they got in serious trouble , and some people didn 't get caught . I imagine it depended on whoever was the guard at the gate or whether or not you happened to know the guard at the gate , you know , just all sorts of things go into this . Mrs . Osborne : There were buses , and it cost ten cents , and they went all over town , and you could transfer from one bus to another . So I could go home - I walked to school from where I lived , but I could go home with my friends by just having a dime and getting on the bus with them and go and spend the afternoon at someone 's home , even if they lived out on the west end of town . So that made it very simple . Mrs . Osborne : They did , yes . I did more of that when I became a senior in high school . I was extra young as a junior and probably the youngest person in the class , so my parents were very strict with me and I didn 't do a lot of that , but later on , yes , I can remember going to see Rock City , and going to Big Ridge , going swimming and being in a canoe that got turned over , and you know , the guy lost his shoes [ laughter ] , but he learned to never dive out of a canoe . Mrs . Osborne : And that 's where we had senior skip day back then . That was before it got dangerous . It 's probably in the last five year period before it got dangerous . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . So , that 's when the school started really , you know , everybody had to do - if you went anywhere , it was by bus with the whole group doing the same thing , and we went to Big Ridge for senior skip day . I remember senior skip day . I loved that place . It was a lot of fun back then . Mrs . Osborne : As a matter of fact , I was involved in Bridge Club , and I didn 't even know how to play bridge . I was involved in Maskers also ; I was in several plays , and scared to death to stand up in front of an audience , but determined to try to get over it . And I played the mother . Only one time did I ever get to play a romantic lead . The rest of the time , I was always cast as the mother or the friend or something like this . Mrs . Osborne : I really can 't . I can remember the name of - the only time that I played the romantic lead - who played opposite me , and that was the drum major at that time , Bob Barrett . And I remember my name when I was somebody 's mother . I was Mrs . Chickester . But what was the name of the play ? Mrs . Osborne : My father said , " Get a job . " And he , either he or my mother , found out that the drug store that they got their prescriptions filled at , Elm Grove Drug Store , was looking for a counter clerk , and so I went down there and applied for a job , and they hired me , and I worked there that summer , and if ever a job made you appreciate what a college education could do for you , that was it . It was so hot ; there was no air conditioning , and you were on your feet the whole time and busy the whole time you were there . I was the soda jerk . I made wonderful milkshakes and sodas and , you know , all kinds of things . And [ I was ] very carefully watched by the man who owned the store to make sure I didn 't put an extra scoop of ice cream in any of my friends ' things . So , you know , I was honest to a T , absolutely , or honest to a fault , I guess is the term . And he wound up really liking me and asking my parents as I went off to college , you know , " When is Barbara coming home ? I want her to work on such - and - such a weekend ; I 'm having a sale , " or , " When , " you know , " Can she come back then ? Can she work over Christmas ? " This type of thing . So he liked me and I liked the fact that I didn 't have to do that for a living . Mrs . Osborne : Just turned seventeen during the summer . So off I went to Tennessee Wesleyan , and the minister , our minister from First Methodist Church took me and got me registered . He got my parents to say - give me permission to go . And moved into this very old dorm with a dried up little old lady dorm mother , and I wound up becoming the only - there were only two of us that started - we started in the winter quarter , because it took the minister that long to get my parents to give me permission to go . They just didn 't want me to leave that soon . And so only two of us started school in the winter quarter . So she was my roommate , the other girl , and she lasted two weeks and went home . So I was the only person in the entire school with no roommate , and that 's kind of a lonesome way to be . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : So what was that like ? Did you live in your room , or did you have a sleeping porch ? What was that like ? Mrs . Osborne : No , you lived in your room , and the rules there were very different from what they are now . Your parents had to sign a paper saying you could get in a car or you couldn 't get in a car . My parents refused to sign saying I could get in a car , so therefore I was not allowed to ride with anybody anywhere . They also - the dorm mother came around and made sure that you - or tried to make sure that you cleaned your room every week , and that your bed was made every day , and I was one of the biggest problems , because I decided to rebel on all the things I had been taught at home , and never make the bed and never clean the room . My parents got quite a few phone calls that year about their rebellious daughter [ laughter ] . But I joined the Tennessee Wesleyan Choir , and got some absolutely marvelous experience there and wonderful praise from the choir director , who was a real stickler . He kept saying things like , " If there are any more altos like you in Oak Ridge , send them to me ! " So I really enjoyed that and we did different shows . I worked in Maskers there at Wesleyan . The choir went on choir trips singing at churches around in different parts of Tennessee . We sang with the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra on Beethoven 's 9th Symphony . What else did we do , things that were big time for me at that point ? It was just lots of fun . Oh , yeah , we put on Sigmund Romberg 's The Desert Song , and I learned to love Sigmund Romberg 's music through that , which I still have , a love for his music . But that was a terrific experience , the music part . And I started taking Botany because my father insisted I had to take a science ; I had to major in a science . So that was my way of rebelling against , you know , not taking any of the , what I consider the harder sciences , Chemistry or Biology or something . Botany , I was doing it my way , which is very silly . There were no jobs in botany , or at least very few , but I didn 't really care ; I was just having fun . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds like it . So after college , you moved back to Oak Ridge and got a job here . Where did you work and what was it like to work there ? Mrs . Osborne : I actually didn 't finish college . My father had me drop out after two years because I failed typing . I couldn 't stay awake ; it was at eight o ' clock in the morning , and I didn 't go to bed early enough to . I would just be so bored I would sit there and go to sleep with my hands on the keyboard . You don 't pass doing things like that . So he was really upset with me after being an extremely good scholar all my life , to fail a typing course . And so he made me go to Knoxville Business College and get a steno degree and then get a job . So after - I spent a year or nine months over in Knoxville , going to Knoxville Business College , hating every minute of it , and then I applied at the plants , which were run by Union Carbide at that point , and they started giving me all kinds of tests when I went in for filling out - I took the usual typing test and shorthand and then they started having me take some other tests , and I could not understand why . Then they called me to say I had been hired to work at X - 10 to be a computer operator on the first computer to be in the Southeast . I had no idea what they were talking about , because I 'd never heard of a big computer - a little handheld calculator , maybe , or a tabletop calculator , not handheld back then , but not a computer . And I went home and told my father and mother this and my father just about jumped out of his chair , he was so excited , because he knew all about this . Being in the Budget Division of AEC , he knew what the thing had cost and all about the logistics of it , the whole thing , and he just thought that was the most exciting thing and the fact that his daughter was going to be working on it , which was the most exciting thing he ever heard of . So I was hired to be a computer operator on the ORACLE , which was the first large computer in the entire Southeast . It was built in Argonne and then shipped down to X - 10 for the Math Panel at that point , and for the rest of the people at the lab to use , but it was going to be run by the Math Panel . ADr . Hamilton - Brehm : Sounds a little frustrating . Mrs . Osborne : It was frustrating , but that 's how everything starts . And it was exciting . I loved it . I loved learning about it , I loved working on it , and the more I worked on it , the more I wanted to do , so I wound up finally not being an operator . They hired some young men for that , and I was changed to becoming a programmer for the ORACLE . Now , the ORACLE stood for Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine . That 's O - R - A - C - L - E , yeah . And that 's what it stood for , and that was before FORTRAN , before any of the early languages . So people out there were writing subroutines ; we were shifting binary bits back and forth to do everything , to do additions , subtractions , multiplications , writing little routines to accomplish what people later accomplished in one word or one bit or this type of thing . So it was a very exciting time , and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of that . Met a lot of people . Mrs . Osborne : Well , in my office , it was quiet , but when I worked on the computer , I was sitting at the console of this enormous machine that was probably , golly , I don 't think it was as big as a football field , but it was close to it , and it was just banks and banks and banks of these cathode ray tubes , with this enormous console in front of it . At least compared to what they are now , it was enormous . And where you 're flipping all kinds of little toggle switches and doing all sorts of things , and you 're working with all the best minds in the laboratory who were coming to put problems on and doing different things . And you 're sitting in front of a huge , great big plate glass window , which , seeing as I was twenty - one and single was kind of exciting , because everybody that I worked with had a single friend , it seemed like , and they were all walking by with their single friends and saying , " Would you like to meet her ? " So it was like being in show business almost . Mrs . Osborne : I was the only one right then , yes , for the first year . Now , there were women on the Math Panel , but they were definitely mathematicians , and I was not a mathematician at that point . I just sort of moved into that later . And evidently it was the test that they gave me that showed that I could do this or could handle it , that this was one of my strengths , so I always thought , how nice , had no idea what I was doing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , well , a lot of air conditioning . Very , very definitely a lot of air conditioning . And they checked whole banks of the tubes every single morning . The computer was down every morning for maintenance , and they would discover that something - there 'd been one tube blinking the day before , so who knows . At first it didn 't even run at night , you know , there wasn 't the need for it . And then as they began to find more uses for it and more uses for it , they started doing things at night out there , and I can remember riding out there at night with some physicists to help them with their programs , run them , and getting stopped by some of the , well , they were the guards there back by the plants , because physicists were not necessarily great drivers , the ones that were really good at some of the other things , at least these particular ones . They were brilliant men , and I 'm not saying that about all physicists , but we used to , as a young woman , we used to group them . Physicists were the ones that walked into doors and walked into people and this type of thing . Mrs . Osborne : And I married a physicist who never walks into doors or walks into people . I thought he was an engineer because he was just so neat and everything . But , yeah , we used to definitely pigeonhole the guys that walked down the hall to get coffee : " Oh yeah , that 's a chemist , you can tell , " or you 'd see him hit that wall , " He 's a physicist , " or - this sort of thing . It was a good place to be young . Mrs . Osborne : Well , the head of the Math Panel was a well known mathematician who wrote books and whatnot , Austin Householder , and he was one of the shyest men you 've ever seen in your life . He might have been a brilliant mathematician ; he was a brilliant mathematician . I can remember trying to read something that he had written one time and just , it was so far over my head , it was ridiculous . So he was definitely brilliant . But then there was a - several , what I would call big time - they became like vice presidents or assistant directors of the lab or something like this . I did meet Alvin Weinberg a time or two . And then there was Bob Sharpie , who was an assistant director , and he was an interesting man . He wound up becoming the head of some big company here in the United States , and , you know , multi - millionaire type person , becoming very well known . But at that point , he was just , what I thought was an extremely egotistical , hard to get along with person , who was an authority on a lot of things . And there was a program going on on television at that time called The $ 64 , 000 Question . There was a young high school girl who was on this show who was doing very , very well , and I can 't remember what her exact deal was , that you picked the field you want the questions in . When you got to the $ 64 , 000 question , which was the top one , you could have an authority come in and help you with it , and she picked Bob Sharpie to be her authority to come in . So we were - everybody in Oak Ridge was glued to the T . V . , if they had one back then , to watch that . And they won the $ 64 , 000 , she did . So he invited her and her parents to come and tour X - 10 , and I have a picture of them . And she 's just a normal looking girl , wearing glasses , everything - but obviously she was going to wind up being extremely good at whatever science she went into , and I never knew whatever happened to her . I hope she was a real success . But it was interesting to see , you know . Mrs . Osborne : First week . We were taking a bus - there was a bus that ran out to the lab - and so because you didn 't have a car you rode the bus . And when I went down to the bus stop , there were two of my friends from high school waiting for the same bus . So we were standing there talking and up came this nice young man to talk to one of the girls that I 'd gone to school with , and she introduced him to me , and it turned out that he was dating her at that point , or had had a couple of dates with her . And I thought he was really cute . And that was how I met him . And then we had all been asked to be ushers at an Oak Ridge Playhouse play later in the week , so we decided , well , we would - definitely none of us have a date for that , we would all do something together afterwards . So my parents dropped me off at the play . Actually the plays were at the Oak Ridge High School Auditorium right then , which was the old one up on Kentucky Avenue , and when I got there , I found out every other - there were four of us as usherettes at that point - the other three had each gotten a date . I 'm the only one that turned a date down and didn 't have one . So they were all going somewhere afterwards and I was not . Fortunately , friends of my parents were there at the play and gave me a ride home . But Morris always said - Morris was the date for this one girl , and he always said he felt so sorry for me standing there that he decided he wanted to ask me for a date . So I think I was his pity date [ laughter ] . Mrs . Osborne : But he never would ask me for a date far enough in advance . He would , you know , say , " How about could you go out , " he 'd call on Friday , " Could you go out with me on Monday night ? " Well , I already had a date Monday night . He had to call earlier than that . So after he asked me twice for a date and I turned him down each time , he said he wasn 't going to call me again , but I suggested what about such - and - such a night , when I was free , and so we went out then and that was the start of something that never stopped . By the fourth date , I knew that he was going to be the one that was going to - I was going to fall in love with him and make a big difference in my life . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , he was president of the Young Adult Fellowship at First Methodist Church , and I had always been very active in church . I was going to Kern Methodist Church at that point because it was closer to my home . So we had that and the fact that we both worked at X - 10 and we were both going to school at night and we both liked to go to the swimming pool . We did a lot of going to the swimming pool on weekends , and going up to the Smokies and driving around or hiking or both , having picnics on weekends , also . And we were both small town . In fact , he was even smaller : he 'd lived on a farm all his life . So it was definitely a reciprocating thing . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , it was a very small wedding . Morris was in the process of doing some experiments with his job in solid state physics at that point , so we had to time the wedding between experiments . Because when an experiment was running , somebody had to be out there with it at night , and because the other people that were working on it all had families , he was the one that would be out with it at night . And a new husband doesn 't necessarily want to be spending the night out with an experiment . So we got married on a weekend that was at the end of one experiment and before the next one started , so we could have a honeymoon in there . And we had a very small wedding at Kern Methodist Church at eleven o ' clock in the morning , because that was before air conditioned churches , and it was in July and hot as blazes . Everything stuck to you because it was just so hot . It was mainly the people I worked with and the people he worked with and some of the people from church and friends of my parents and a few of our friends , mutual friends , and we had a reception downstairs , with just cake and punch and nuts and mints . That 's what used to be - you know , I can remember it cost ten dollars for the flowers . It cost ten dollars for the cake , because the lady that made the cake was just going into the business and that 's what she charged for this lovely cake . And a friend went over to Farmer 's Market and bought the flowers over in Knoxville and then decorated the church with them and then carried them downstairs for the reception . And I mean , it was - we got married - I used to say we got married on a dime and that was just about it . So , that 's why we had a big fiftieth wedding anniversary , because we had such a small wedding . But it certainly lasted . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , they threw the paper chad from the tapes , from all - typing all those tapes for the computer . They 'd been bagging up all those tiny , tiny little bits of paper that came out , and they were sort of a greasy paper , oily , and they had bags full of the stuff . It looked like it was just pouring rain when they were throwing this . And it got - the best man drove us away from the wedding in his mother 's car , and the car just got plastered with this stuff , and his mother never could get it completely cleaned out . [ laughter ] She wound up trading cars , I understand . And I was wearing a big white lace hat when I left on the honeymoon , and it was just full of these bits of little tiny round bits of paper chad , you know . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . Let 's see , when the children - we had three children , and I quit work when I was expecting the first child because I was having a lot of problems , so - and at that time , you stayed home with your children . You didn 't go back to work unless you were really an expert at something . And I was certainly not an expert at anything . So I stayed home as a mother , and then sixteen months later I had a second child , and then three years later I had a third child . So I was pretty busy . I stayed home until the third child went off to school . So when he went to school , I went back to work as an instructional aide at Linden School , was hired by the principal there that had been there for many , many years , and was just a wonderful lady . Mrs . Osborne : Around ' 65 , ' 66 , something like that . And so I worked there half - time as an instructional aide , so I was home when the children were home , and I could either drive them to school or pick them up from school and bring them home depending on whether I worked mornings or afternoons . I worked in third grade at least three of the years , and I worked in sixth grade one year . Got to go to Tremont with the sixth graders and teach crafts , which was - that was a wonderful week . It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life . I 'd been to Tremont as a mother , but to go as an instructor was even more fun . So I did that and I left Linden School because my husband was picked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to go to Germany as a guest scientist for two years to work at Kernforschungszentrum outside of Karlsruhe , West Germany . And so we moved the three children and our dog over there for two years , which was not an easy thing to do at that point . Our oldest son was a senior at high school , our daughter was a sophomore , and our youngest child was sixth grade . Mrs . Osborne : This was , you know , we went over in 1975 , so yeah . I 'm sorry , I must have gone back to work - I did not go back to work when I said I did . I must have gone back to work about ' 70 . Ah , okay , that makes a difference , yeah , sorry about that . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's all right . Was it hard to - you said you brought your dog over to Germany . Was that hard to do back then , or was it easy ? Mrs . Osborne : If you brought an animal in , it would be put to death . And so we were just terrified about what was going to happen to our dog , which - he was a member of our family , definitely . We 'd had his mother before him and had him since he was born . And I can remember when we got off the plane in London , we could see his crate being unloaded , and we were just sitting in there watching to see what they were going to do with it . And when we saw it go onto the plane going to Germany , that was such a relief . I don 't know what we would have done if they hadn 't done that . But they were having an outbreak of rabies in England at the time , and that 's why they had just shut down everything completely . But that was terrifying . And the children were already so upset about going that that 's all they needed was to find out that the dog might be missing when we got there . And there were people - when we got to Germany , I remember seeing , there were some animal crates going around , empty , on the carousel . Fortunately , ours still had a dog in it . Mrs . Osborne : And he was so glad to get out of there . But that was the hardest - they would not , back then , they wouldn 't allow animals up in the plane . He had to be down in baggage , which was not heated really or air conditioned or - you know , it was just really , really bad . So we were lucky he survived . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : But the Germans were pretty dog - friendly , weren 't they ? Mrs . Osborne : Oh , very much so . Our dog had so many friends over there . We had friends that Morris knew from work there that wanted to keep him for every trip we went on , and we would come back - he was a dachshund , just a regular sized dachshund , and we tried to keep him fairly sleek , because they do have back troubles , and every time we came back from a trip , he would be just like a football . Mrs . Osborne : Stuffed to the gills , round as all get out , and have garlic breath from all the wurst that they 'd been feeding him . He just loved those German friends and they loved him . Oh boy , " He is just such a good dog , he just loves staying with us . " Yes , he did . He got spoiled rotten . And we 'd have to run him all over the place to get him slimmed down again , get him back on dog food . And , " I don 't know why you feed him dog food . He really likes salami better . " Well , yes , he does . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , the weather . It got dark so early . It would be , in the wintertime , it would be dark - by the time our children got off the school bus , it was already dark . So playing outside , there wasn 't any such thing . And it was dark when they left for school in the morning . Just all kinds of things like this . And where we were , we didn 't have a lot of snow . The temperature 's something like Oak Ridge , except a little bit more - it rained every single day , and you didn 't have the sunny days . Like , Oak Ridge is wonderful in that we have these beautiful sunny days in the middle of winter that just restores your faith in humanity and life . Everybody needs this , and in Germany you did not have this . It was just gray , day after day after day . Of course they had lots of celebrations and lots of parties and Fasching was huge , huge . Fasching was a time of parades everywhere and lots of people dressing up and we went to special Fasching parades and villages over there where they had people all dressed up in these very old masks , witch masks , wooden ones , and went around dressed as witches and poked their brooms at the dog - you took your dog everywhere in Germany - and would give out candy to the children , you know , scare them and then give them candy , this type of thing . Everything was just so different and it was so clean over there ; it was wonderful . You were responsible for keeping the street in front of your house clean , and I was responsible for keeping the stairs and the landing - we were on the second floor of a house , where we were living , and I was responsible for keeping that mopped . Now , some things were very , very hard . The German washing machines back then - this was in the days of polyester , and a lot of our clothes were polyester , and the German washing machines started with cold water , heated the water up to boiling , took like two hours to do a load and sort of boiled the clothes , so what happened to polyester was terrible . We did not ever buy a German washing machine . We wound up Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . So did your children enjoy school in Germany and did they learn German ? Mrs . Osborne : Our daughter did and our youngest son wound up enjoying it . Our oldest son did not . He just couldn 't make it . We had assured him that if he would just try , that if he couldn 't make the switch , we would send him back to graduate with his class here , because he was a senior in high school . And he just could not make the change . So we sent him back to Oak Ridge by himself just about New Year 's . He had to be back for a whole semester in order to graduate with his class at Oak Ridge High School . So some friends of ours that had a daughter his age had said he could stay with them . He didn 't know them that well , but he came back and stayed with them . It was very , very hard on him . I would never do that again . I don 't know how we would handle it if it ever came up again , but that was , for him , it was a bad , bad year . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , it is too bad . The other two wound up making a switch . Linda wound up becoming very good in German and Paul wound up enjoying himself . Now they were going to an American school on the Army base . We had promised them - there was no school that taught in English around there , and we only had six weeks notice that we were going to be going , moving over , so we had no time to learn the language ahead of time . So we had assured them that they would be going to a school where they would be taught in English . So they went to a military school , which was a terrible school . It was not a good one at all . After going to the Oak Ridge schools , it was a real , real letdown . The first class we ever took our oldest son into , it was an English class , and there were guys sitting in there reading comic books , getting credit for reading comic books , and David had been in advanced classes at Oak Ridge High School . Mrs . Osborne : So the teacher just said to us , " Get him out of here as fast as you can ; send him home . " So that 's another reason that he wound up going home . So he did okay scholastically , but emotionally it was just really not good . He was too young to be away from the family . Mrs . Osborne : Yes . It was not easy . They spoke English to him and spoke German to each other , so that he had to really learn fast and try to get really good in order to know what was going on , and it was not easy for him , either . We were the first of several families that were sent over for this project , and it was a project to have the - like , Morris was supposed to be working with people over there who were working on the same type of thing that he had been working on here at the lab , so that they didn 't have to duplicate the same experiments and whatnot . They could share information back and forth , which obviously makes sense financially as well as other ways , so that 's what it was all about , and we learned a whole lot by being over there , found out how insulated we had been living in our little puddle here in Oak Ridge , that we thought we were big time stuff because there were people here from all over the world and actually we weren 't all that big time stuff . When you get out in the world , you find out . So we learned a lot of different - did lots and lots of traveling , went to Holland and Belgium and Spain and Egypt and Italy , and we have all the usual things : got robbed in Italy , got sick in Spain . And went to Czechoslovakia , which was a closed - in country back then and that was on a - actually , we joined a military tour , or one that was sponsored by the officers ' wives club , this sort of thing , so it was very inexpensive . And did the same thing - went to London . I took the kids and went to London for three or four days and went to the ballet and just did all kinds of - the museums and whatnot . Just did a lot of things so that they had all kinds of advantages over people that never get to do any of these things . And I had all kinds of advantages this way . I loved the traveling . I loved going to different castles and seeing all the churches and the age of the cities . Like , they 'd be having their thousand year anniversary . And that 's when the United States was having its two - hundredth . Mrs . Osborne : We were having a really big celebration and everything , and Elvis Presley died while we were over there , and that was a big thing in Germany , too . I was just amazed at how much the Germans loved him . But he had been in Germany when he was in the military . And I was in a German American woman 's club in which we had a little cooking group of eight ladies , and we took turns cooking . The American ladies would cook one month and the German ladies would cook the next month , and then exchange recipes and whatnot . Jimmy Carter was elected president while we were over there and he had cheese grits . Well , they had never heard of cheese grits , and they wanted to know what they were , so we fixed a brunch for the ladies in our group , the German ladies , in which we fixed cheese grits and sausage balls and eggs and this sort of thing , like you would have a southern - and biscuits and whatnot . And they did things like - everything that they did had lots of liquor in it . We had Black Forest cake , which has a whole bottle of Kirschwasser in it , which is , whoa , that stuff burns all the way down . I think you could light the cake on fire . Mrs . Osborne : And just lots of things like that , and had some of the most wonderful mushroom soup that they made one time , just some things that you would never have had an opportunity to try otherwise , just heavenly . And you learned what some of the customs were . Anytime you have a coffee over there , you end the coffee by serving something alcoholic just before you send everybody home , which is not what 's done in this country . Mrs . Osborne : And we were always scared to death that we would get stopped by the police on the way home . But you couldn 't insult them by saying no . At least we never would have done that . Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Yeah . But they appreciated finding out some of these things . And we had just a regular picnic for them one time with hotdogs and hamburgers and potato salad and the whole thing , just as they were trying to do typical dishes for us that they would use . So it was fun exchanging . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I was very restless when I came back and I had been to so many wonderful , wonderful museums , that I thought , I want to work for a museum . So I went down here to what was then the American Museum of Atomic Energy , which is now the American Museum of Science and Energy , and I got a job . And the longer I worked there , the more responsibility they gave me . I started out working in the gift shop and working as a - doing one or two of the little audience shows that they had . I did the genetics show with the animals , and then I wound up - they were giving me more things to read and more things to read and wound up doing one on reactors . I think I told you that when I found out that I had this physics class from Harvard in my audience one day around the reactors , I decided , oh boy , you better get back to school if you 're going to answer questions from people like this . So that 's when I decided to go back to school , and I went back to UT and started after twenty - five years of being out of school , just signed up for a full load . I continued working at the museum the first year and then I had to quit because I just had too many labs and everything to have time for that . So I went back for two years , loved it , just loved going back to school , because that 's one of those things you get your pats on the back , just right away . Here 's your grades . You 're either doing well or you 're not doing well , you know , you have something . It 's so different from being a housewife and always sort of wondering , " Did they really like that meal ? " Because the one that didn 't is going to tell you about it , but if they did like it , they 're not necessarily going to say anything . Going back to school is really a positive experience ; it was for me . And I really enjoyed being around the kids . They treated me like I was practically one of them . They loved to borrow my notes because I took very good notes and much better than they did , and they like to study with me for exams and stuff . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : YoMrs . Osborne : Well , actually , no . It had been twenty - five years , and I just - actually it had been thirty years since I had done that , and I had never really used my shorthand , so no , I really couldn 't do that . But I certainly was really good at other things , and I just took things that I enjoyed and wound up getting my degree in Botany and doing some lab work for one of the botanists over there that was a lot of fun . I mean , it was a lot of work , too , but it was fun to do it . I thoroughly enjoyed it . I wound up trying to grow a strain of something or other and when she , my professor , examined what I had been carefully - every time , every week - dividing and spreading out on another Petri dish and dividing and this sort of thing , she found I was growing an absolutely terrible strain of staph [ Staphylococcus ] . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : But I 'd done it well . So , I said , " How could I have gotten that ? " And she said , " Well , everybody has staph on their body . " Mrs . Osborne : Yeah . And even though you 're running your hands under these lights to - you know , you 're washing and everything and then you 're running them under the special lights before you 're putting them under the hood to work and everything . But evidently I 'd gotten a staph bug in there . But she caught it and no harm done . And I had certainly learned the procedure even though I hadn 't grown the right thing . So that was interesting . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : What an interesting experience . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : [ laughter ] Ah , yes , a student like me is really - oh , and I 'd learned - one of the really exciting things that I did , we had a lady professor , assistant professor , that taught one of my lab courses that specialized in spiders . So she was going to have us specialize in spiders that quarter . We had to go out in this field when it was all wet with dew and whatnot and try to trap spiders , crawling around on our hands and knees . And I thought , if my bridge club could only see me now : I 'm out here crawling around in the mud trying to find spiders , which I absolutely hate and trap them in this little glass jar and then dot them with a dot of color . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : We had started out in a babysitting club together with our children way back when I had the first child . We didn 't have grandmothers and people around that could babysit , and so a lot of the mothers banded together , like , twenty - five , thirty mothers would band together into a babysitting club , and took turns keeping the books . A different woman kept the books every month and you took calls from people who wanted a sitter and calls from people who were available to sit , and you matched them up this way . And if you used a sitter for three hours , you had to sit for somebody for three hours . And so it didn 't cost you anything . You had a well - trained mother that was sitting with your children , so you didn 't have to worry about them , and back then this was just really important , because everybody was getting by on as little as possible and wanting a good sitter , so this is what we did . And so I had met Connie in this , and we had formed a bridge club way back then . Well , she said they needed a clerk at the library and why didn 't I come and interview . So I did . And I didn 't want to be a library clerk per se , but then she explained that probably the circulation supervisor would be leaving within the year and they thought I might be interested in that job and that the experience of being a clerk for six , eight months would certainly stand me in good stead , seeing as I didn 't have a library degree . So I did that . I worked as a clerk , and then I became the circulation supervisor , and was that for like ten years . And that was my - and then I had to retire because I 'd worn out my knees at that point , particularly one knee . I was on crutches at that point . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I learned how tough it is to tell people they have to pay for overdue books when the reason their books are overdue is because their husband had checked them out and then had died . And I was not allowed - because the money went in - all the overdue monies went into the City general fund . I was not allowed to forgive a single nickel of an overdue thing . And that is so hard to find out the reason these are overdue is because " I didn 't even think about the fact that , you know , we had these out when John died . " And of course you would normally say , " Well , don 't worry about it ; we 're just happy to have them back . " Nope , I had to charge . That was really hard . And then there was the day that there was this nice young man that was obviously going to college and didn 't have much when he came in and he had his backpack , and he started taking these books out of his backpack , putting them up on the counter , bringing them back , and as he did , these huge roaches went crawling off , just running off from these books . Mrs . Osborne : I didn 't want those roaches running around the library . And I had to take the book back and wash it well , but we had plastic on it . He was so embarrassed . Mrs . Osborne : So that was one of my memorable moments . And then there was the man who brought a book back in a plastic bag and said , " I think you might want to throw this away . " And I 'm saying , " Why would I want to throw the book away ? " [ He said ] , " Well , it 's not a good book . I don 't think you want to have it . " [ I said ] , " I don 't think we have the right to judge whether a book is a good book or not . " [ He said ] , " Well I still think you ought to throw it away . " I kept trying to find out why , and finally it turned out that it was because he had dropped it in something very , very bad and had tried to wash it off somewhat , put it in the plastic bag and brought it back . Needless to say , we threw it away . Mrs . Osborne : People are more fun . And then there were all sorts of just lovely people that came in that I hadn 't seen for years : people I 'd gone to high school with , people that had been friends of my parents , just lots of wonderful , wonderful people that it was such a pleasure to see and to renew acquaintance with and to help . And they love the library . Oak Ridgers really use their library a tremendous amount . It 's very , very important to them . And it 's a very good library , frankly . And I know you want to hear about the man with the shoe fetish . Mrs . Osborne : It was a nice young man who had some mental problems that I had never heard of before . I had never heard of a shoe fetish before . And he pigeonholed me one day back in the stacks asking me to help him find something . And while we were back in the stacks , he started admiring my shoes and saying he 'd " love to get some like that for his mother and what kind were they ? " And I couldn 't remember what kind they were , so I , being very accommodating , pulled one off to see what the brand was , at which point he grabbed it out of my hand , and then I had to try to get the shoe back from him , and that 's when I realized something was wrong . And I was so embarrassed . I finally got my shoe back and went running back into the back room and told somebody about it , and everyone started laughing . And I had just met the man with the shoe fetish . And evidently , most everybody had met him sooner or later there and I had just run into him . He never did anything terrible ; he just liked shoes . And it was embarrassing , very embarrassing . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : About the same number that work there now , I think . I don 't think they 've been able to add or subtract much of anybody since I was there . It was not computerized at that point , so there were a lot of mundane jobs that had to be done , like we had to put date due cards in every single book that was checked out , book , record , whatever . And we had to every - that 's when people were checking out lots of records . And we had to check every single record when it came back in to see if it had been scratched or warped or something or other , because , it 's amazing , the number of people who didn 't understand that the LP records , if you left them in a car , even for ten or fifteen minutes , would warp . Mrs . Osborne : And they would have to pay for them then because the library , obviously , had paid for them . So a lot of things that took a lot longer to do back then - we had to take a book card out of the pocket , back pocket , of every book , so that we knew what was checked out and what wasn 't checked out , because now you can just , you know , key it into the computer and " Oh , oh yeah , that book 's checked out , " you know , " And it 's due back a week from Wednesday " or something . Well , then , we couldn 't . We would have to go through all of these cards . So we had cards that had to be alphabetized every single morning , and it was from all the things that had been checked out the day before . So you alphabetized them , and then you worked them in with the other cards . And so if you were not able to alphabetize , you couldn 't work at the library . That was one of the tests that was given to every page , every clerk , everyone that went to work there . And it 's amazing the number of young people that could not alphabetize . So being a page at the Oak Ridge Public Library was a real leg up also . That was a good job . It was hard , and if you were a good page , you were capable of doing almost anything in life . That 's the amazing thing about it . Because you had to be able to work with people , get along with people , you had to be able to do things quickly , you had to be able to be very agreeable and just - taking the truckloads of books out and putting them in the right place . Every once in a while , we would find that we had just all kinds of books out of place , and we would find we had a page who was being lazy . They were just taking them out and just sticking them somewhere , which involved , then , either my retraining , talking to them about changing their way or else firing them , one or the other , depending on what they were willing to do . And we had volunteers that came in that helped put the books up also , and every once in a while we would have a volunteer that absolutely could not put them in the right place . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : How many pages and volunteers did you manage ? Mrs . Osborne : I had eleven people under me , of which - they were - all the clerks were under me plus all of the five pages were under me . So , six clerks and five pages , and that 's the most , like my boss only had one person under her and that was me . And the head of reference only had the reference librarians under her . Because the pages change every year , I was always going through training and retraining , which meant I was working late , night after night , because the pages didn 't come to work till like five o ' clock , and I got off at 5 : 30 . Well , if you 're training somebody , you have to be around . So I put in lots of extra time doing that . Mrs . Osborne : It was , it was . I enjoyed it , though . I liked a lot of it . I disliked some of it . I disliked the autonomy , I guess , the fact that you didn 't have the right to be as understanding as you would like to be . And for me that was hard . As I said I was definitely a square peg in a round hole when it came to that . But it takes all kinds to make a good library , I think . Mrs . Osborne : The people , working with the people , seeing them , trying to please them , trying to help them find what they wanted , what they needed , help the kids get the help that they needed for different papers , this sort of thing . I was constantly amazed by damage that people would do to books . I had never known that some people would cut pages out of reference books to avoid paying ten cents to make a copy of a page , that they would just deliberately go back in the stacks and do this sort of thing . I had never known that people would take the expensive tables that you have down there , special ones , and carve things in them , so that you wind up having to buy these special heavy Plexiglas tops for all of them to keep them from being ruined . Just a lot of things like this . I just did not realize that you had people like that . Mrs . Osborne : Guess I grew up in a very small , little , little group of not doing things like this , so I was just amazed at some of the things . Every time somebody got something stolen , I was shocked . I actually threw one young man out one night who was being just terrible . He was a guy that had been a big star at Oak Ridge High School in football , but he 'd never really learned to write his name , and he 'd been in special ed classes all along , so he could print his first name and the first initial of his last name , and that was it . So he liked to hang out in the library . But by this time , he was in his twenties , and he was drinking heavily , and he would come in and want to use the phone . And that 's not a thing you normally do is let people - you certainly can 't leave somebody in the back workroom at night by themselves using the phone . You have to stay by them . So it turns out his important phone call was to a girl he was trying to get a date with for the night . So I told him he had to get off the phone , and he kept on talking and I kept telling him to get off the phone . I finally just cut him off , at which point I thought he was going to hit me , he was so astonished that I would do that . And I beat him to the punch in that I just pointed my finger at him and said , " Get out of here right now . Don 't you come back here tonight . " I was so angry at him because he - I was so busy out at the front desk and he 's taking my time to be back there to try to talk a girl into letting him come over . And he said that was more important , so anyway , he left . And I thought afterwards , my gosh , he could have really hurt me if he 'd wanted to . So that was pretty dumb on my part . Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know . I did not ask them . They invited me back as a volunteer to do the same work that I had been doing , and I went back a time or two , and then I thought , wait a minute , this is kind of dumb . If I could not work here because my knees were so bad for pay , why am I coming back as a volunteer to do the very same work ? So I decided I would do something else . Mrs . Osborne : Well , I went back to doing a lot of the volunteer work that I used to do . I had always done lots of volunteer work at different things . I had always - well , I 'd taught swimming for the Red Cross for years , enjoyed that thoroughly . I taught the swimming badge for the Boy Scouts , lifesaving badge for the Boy Scouts , taught different classes at church . For the last fifteen years , I 've been leading classes in helping people find their spiritual gifts that God has given them , which has been just one of the most exciting things to do imaginable , and leading other small groups . I 'm a very strong believer in that to have a deep faith in God , you need to belong to a small group , that people help sustain you , help you sustain your faith and support you in all kinds of things . And not everyone is fortunate enough to have a group of friends or people like this . And that 's what small groups do . And so studying and deepening your faith while you are making these relationships or carving out these relationships makes it doubly precious and really sustains you for years in everything you do . It 's been very helpful for me . Mrs . Osborne : Nope , no , they always had lots of volunteers and I always thought I would go back there . I did do the voice for one of their Oak Ridge shows way back . I was on recording there . Mrs . Osborne : It was a slide show . I 'm sorry , it was a slide show that they did with the voice going along with it , and the voice that went with it was me . And that went for quite a few years before they changed shows . So now they have professional people that do that , and I have never been a professional voice person . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I also sing . I used to . Since I quit working down there . I discovered that I 'd always wanted to be a torch singer and I love singing some of the old love songs : Gershwin , Cole Porter , and just a lot of the songs from the Second World War and just a lot of things like this I like . There are needs for this in some of the retirement centers and at the Keystone group down here , which is the daycare center for people with problems . Music stays with people longer than any other kind of memory . Singing some of the old songs brings back all kinds of things for them , and I love doing it . We were having cabarets at church also almost every year for a while when we would be putting on a dinner . And then eventually we wound up not doing a dinner ; we did just delicious homemade desserts and the show , and selling tickets . So I did a lot of this . I did a little directing and a lot of singing and this type of thing , and then I sang at the Daily Grind , which was a coffee house here in Oak Ridge , and that was fun . Mrs . Osborne : Right , right . They 're in the corner at Jackson Square . Yeah , I used to do that on Friday night once in a while . And , you know , you 'd end up singing for three hours straight , and that takes a little training to be able to do . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , that 's neat . You know , you were here during the sixties , and I think that Margaret Mead came here in the sixties . Is that right ? Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I 've heard that she was critical of Oak Ridge because there weren 't any grandparents in Oak Ridge and she thought that you needed - Mrs . Osborne : Oh ! Well now she 'd be critical of Oak Ridge because it 's all grandparents . [ laughter ] Mrs . Osborne : You know , she , bless her heart , she just had to be critical of things , and that 's a good point . But a lot of people wound up getting their parents to move here after they had children and said they were staying on here . After their parents retired , their parents wound up moving here and retiring to help take care of their grandchildren and whatnot . But , yeah , I remember she was not - she didn 't seem to find as much joy in Oak Ridge or pride in it as we all thought she should . And then there was a doctor - who was the doctor from Georgia that I used to go to ? Mrs . Osborne : Dr . Greenblatt , from Georgia . He was a specialist in hormones , and Carbide actually had him come up and talk to all the wives that would go to hear him , about how to go through difficult times in your life , go through menopause or whatnot , or how to help your children out if they were having hormone problems or this type of thing , and he came up , and that 's where I went to hear him . And he was very far out as far as most people were concerned . He believed in having not just shots , hormone shot , or taking pills , but he believed in having them put pellets , hormone pellets , into the abdomen or into the hip that would last for five to six months for people . And he did the same thing for children that were not growing as they should or not developing as they should , and he was a specialist in this down at the University of Georgia , I believe . Mr . Osborne : I think it was the University of Georgia at Augusta . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , okay . So , anyway , I used to have one of his books that he had written , also on this . He was really an expert on this . And I wound up going to him quite a few times . He was an amazing man . All these people that are really amazing have egos , or a lot of them , have egos to go along with it . So they are sometimes their own worst enemy . But it 's amazing how much they know . And Oak Ridge just seemed to have the best of everything back in the fifties and sixties . Back when I was a girl , you didn 't have to worry about locking your doors , you didn 't have to worry about who your children were going with , because everybody that was in here had been investigated and had some sort of clearance or some sort of investigation done . You did not have to - it was just safe everywhere . And one of the really neat things is there were all these greenbelt areas between houses to give you more privacy , so you didn 't have just house right behind house behind house in a lot of cases . And I know where we lived , there was a gravel path that went through the woods and up these - across a little bridge that across this great huge drainage ditch that would just be roaring with water after the rains , and up some steps and up onto Georgia Avenue , and then right over down one of those lanes and down to the - across Blankenship field and up to the school there . That 's how I walked to school . And when you 're coming home from the movie , that 's how you walked home , through the woods this way , and it was perfectly safe because there weren 't any weirdoes around that - at least certainly no weirdoes that anybody heard of or knew about . Everything was completely safe . And as a teenager , this was just so romantic to get to walk through the woods with your boyfriend and be out of sight of your parents this way . I mean this was just really really terrific . Mrs . Osborne : We had a " D " house down at the bottom of Fulton Lane . It was the only " D " house on the street , and we had to live in the Guest House for the first two weeks waiting for our things to get here and for the house to be finished . And they finished the house and we moved in , and it was a very , very nice house . It was at the bottom , so we were at the cul - de - sac sort of thing . We had houses across the street . There wasn 't anything at the end but just a parking area and then the woods behind us and our porch faced the greenbelt area . A " D " house was really a lovely house . Mrs . Osborne : Senior . He was the one that wound up having the heart transplant and this sort of thing . Anyway , he was the only one out there at that time . And then , after I had been on the Math Panel - I don 't remember how long , I guess just a year or two - they hired a young black woman mathematician - she had her master 's degree in Math - to come and work on the Math Panel . Really a nice young lady . Her husband was a professor at Knoxville College . So when she came , I didn 't realize what a big deal this was , but other people did . When you 're twenty - one , you don 't sometimes realize how important some things are , and it turned out that for her to go to the cafeteria was absolutely terrible , because we were like three blocks from the cafeteria , so you always walked down , naturally , because you couldn 't bring your car in . So you walked to the cafeteria , you bought your food , you sat in there and ate . So you would go to lunch with friends . So when - I can 't remember her name . That 's terrible ; I can picture her but I cannot remember her name . But she was really nice , and so we made plans that three of us were going to take turns going to lunch with her so she would never have to go down there by herself , because sure enough , when she walked in the cafeteria , a lot of the workmen would glare at her and make comments and this sort of thing , because there just had not been any black people eating in there and they were not used to this at all . So we made sure that she never had to go by herself to the cafeteria . And this was fine . We had worked [ it ] out very well , and we enjoyed having lunch with her . Mrs . Osborne : No , but it would have been really tough for her to have to sit by herself at a table , you know . They would not have done anything to her , I 'm sure , but they would have gone out of their way to make comments or something like that . But the fact that she always had two guardians , more or less , with her made it much easier . So her husband had a birthday while she was working there at the lab . So she decided to have a big party for him , and she invited Morris and I , and she invited this other girl from the Math Panel , Nancy Dismuke and her husband Stewart , to go also . So we decided we were all going to go , wondering what it was going to be like , and so we drove with the - the Dismukes drove , we rode with them over to Knoxville and to the Knoxville College area there where they lived and we went into this party . And everybody in the party had a master 's degree or a Ph . D . except for us , I think . [ laughter ] Except for Morris and I , that is , because Nancy Dismuke had a master 's . But they were all from Knoxville College , professors , and there were some white professors . I didn 't realize Knoxville College had some white professors at that point , which they did . So it turned out it was really a strange feeling to be completely surrounded by all blacks , because I had never in my entire life had this happen . And it was just - strange is the only way - and I 'm sure it was as strange for them to see us coming in when they didn 't know us at all . The other white people that worked at Knoxville College fit in just fine , but we were - they weren 't real sure about what we were going to be like or what we were going to say or do , I 'm sure . But we played games and wound up having a nice time . It was a lovely party , with your usual soft drinks and cake and coffee , and this type of thing , and just a happy birthday . Her husband was a really nice guy . She didn 't work for a real long time . She only worked for about a year or two there and then she left . I have a picture of the Math Panel group with hDr . Hamilton - Brehm : Yeah , I 'm sure . When did they start doing the free breakfasts for underprivileged children ? Mrs . Osborne : I honestly don 't know , because they didn 't have them when I worked at Linden . The child was allowed to - the one child I was thinking of was allowed to sleep under a table until almost noon because he was so tired . There were like ten kids in the family and one bed , and so he always got pushed out of bed because he was the youngest . So he would come and sleep under this table , and then would - I don 't know if he had to wait till lunch or if when we had recess , whether they could get him something to eat then . But I know that the counselor there at school would take him up and shower him off and find clean clothes for him and this type of thing , because he had no care at home at all , this one child , had not whatsoever , and it 's just pitiful to see this happen . But they could have been a white family . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yeah . Now , I did not know that until much later that Oak Ridge had a real problem finding teams to play them in the different sports , in football or in basketball because they had integrated . We 're a government town , and so naturally you are integrating . And the other schools around in Tennessee did not want to play a school that had blacks on the team . They weren 't going to have their boys having to get up close and personal and play these guys . So they had an awful time filling the schedules , and they had to offer all kinds of incentives in order to fill the football schedule and whatnot , so that was tough . Mrs . Osborne : We did at that time . We had better equipment , better uniforms . The poverty level around in Tennessee was - or the poverty , not just the level , but the poverty - was very prevalent , and it showed up in things like teams and uniforms and all this sort of thing , which was not considered such a big deal back then as it is now . Now , everybody knows that the more important thing , part of school , is your football and your basketball . Anyway , but that may be one reason we 're behind the Chinese and Japanese , I 'm not sure . But anyway , then it wasn 't that big a thing , and we also , of course , had much better schools . We had teachers that came from all over the place and we had classes - we had science classes that they didn 't have in the local schools around , just all sorts of things here , as well as having drama and art and music and - I 'm sure they had music in some of the things , but we had - Oak Ridge schools just had a lot of things that other schools in the surrounding area could not afford , and that was sort of held against us . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : And also , you had said something about going to shop in Knoxville and Clinton . What was that like ? How did they treat Oak Ridgers ? Mrs . Osborne : Well , I did not shop in Clinton . Clinton was a real little backwater town . It wasn 't worth stopping in , I 'm sorry , at that point . Now , it 's a lovely place to go antiquing , and once you found out about Hammer 's , back before they moved particularly , Hammer 's was always fun to go to . Mrs . Osborne : Hammer 's was a local department store that was in this old building with all kinds of little out - of - the - way rooms and whatnot and little steps here and there and roundabout and they would get in truckloads of stuff that maybe came from a fire sale or came from something or other or came from QVC that didn 't sell . I 'm not sure where all . And they 'd sell at just really , really small prices . I know a girl who got lots of money for college by buying these - what were the shirts that had the duck on it or something like that ? Mrs . Osborne : Izod shirts . She used to go to Hammer 's and buy the Izod shirts , the seconds , and sell them to her sorority sisters at the University of North Carolina for regular prices and make all kinds of money this way . She was very much an entrepreneur and earned a lot of money this way . But that 's the sort of thing that Hammer 's had , if you could get in there . Somebody I know bought a baby grand piano from them . I did buy some wicker furniture from them once , and I used to go over there and get fabric and I 've gotten , you know , a few articles of clothing there at different times , but now it 's - it still has some good buys , I 'm sure , but I 'm too old and tired to shop there anymore . Mrs . Osborne : It moved , no , it 's still in Clinton , but it 's out at the other end of Clinton , now . It 's not in downtown Clinton anymore ; it 's out just before you get to the river , out past where the fairgrounds are on the other side , so it 's not as interesting . It 's in a normal place now instead of being in a funny little hole place . Mrs . Osborne : I did go to Knoxville , and the thing that was so remarkable about Knoxville is the coal soot . I can remember standing on the corner , waiting for a bus , and winding up with black specks all over my coat and my face , and if you touched them , it just spread , because it was coal soot , and it would just grind right into your skin and into your coat , the fabric of it , whatever , and I had never - I mean , we had coal furnaces in Michigan , but we didn 't have coal soot like that . I don 't know if it was a difference in coal or - Mrs . Osborne : I do not remember noticing that . Now I know that we had the same furnace in our " D " house that everybody had , but I have no idea if it was a coal furnace or not because I don 't remember ever getting coal from a coal truck . So whether it might have been an oil furnace back then , I don 't know . Mrs . Osborne : We did not get a coal delivery that I know of . We had no coal . Now , the cemestos did not . I know the flattops did , because this friend that I used to visit in a flattop definitely had the place where the coal was kept out in front and the little coal stove inside and whatnot , but in the cemesto you didn 't have that . So whether I was just too dense to remember it or whether we had a different kind of furnace - Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Well , you remembered it being smoggy in Knoxville , so chances are the problems were worse in Knoxville than they were in Oak Ridge . Mrs . Osborne : They definitely were . They definitely were . And this was in downtown Knoxville on Gay Street , because I was standing on Gay Street because Miller 's was on Gay Street then , and Miller 's was the big department store . Mrs . Osborne : Okay , they were fine . It was the kids at school that used to make fun of the way I talked , and one of the words that they always thought was the funniest was the way I said ' cow , ' and they would always say , " Say ' cow , ' Barbara . Listen to her . Listen to her , now . Say ' cow . ' " And [ I would say ] , " Cow . " They 'd " [ laughter ] . " And I 'd think , " What 's wrong with the way I say ' cow , ' " you know , but who knows . Mrs . Osborne : But I could tell whether I was or whether - I think I could tell if you were . So it 's really strange . It depends on where you 're from . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's right . Everybody has different speech features . How do you think - you know , sometimes people talk about having trouble with businesses in Knoxville because they were obviously not from this area , and the Knoxvillians knew that and they didn 't really like outsiders . You seem to have a pretty good experience in Knoxville from what I can tell , and maybe after the Manhattan Project , it wasn 't so much of a problem . Mrs . Osborne : It made the culture so different from every place else , that we 're spoiled . We think that all other towns are bound to be something like Oak Ridge , that they 're going to have people that are willing to listen to the pros and the cons and then make a decision , that there are people who you can argue with and maybe change their mind that aren 't just completely hidebound and something like this . And somehow , when you get away from Oak Ridge , you find that 's not necessarily true . You get into some of the good old boy stuff , and if you aren 't either a Democrat or a Republican , depending on where you are , why , you don 't have anything good to say or anything worth listening to and so forth and so on , and you 're never going to change somebody 's mind . If you 've got God and logic on your side , you still aren 't going to be able to change their mind , that there are people like this . Because the majority of people in Oak Ridge are operating from a brain and they have learned through the years - now , I 'm not saying everybody , but I 'm saying the majority of people that you run into here are people who have used their minds and found out there 's rights and wrongs and there 's some shady , gray shades in this world and there are some things that you just can 't come out and say is either black or white , and this type of thing . I think we have gotten very spoiled . I know our oldest son found this out . He was the one that went into restaurant management and being a chef . When he went to other towns to help open restaurants , he found some of the narrow - mindedness in some of the South Carolina towns absolutely appalling compared to what he was used to from here in Oak Ridge , the people here . Mrs . Osborne : The things that they say , their beliefs , you know , whether it 's the good old boys on football Saturday or whether it 's the fact that they 're going to fly the - I think South Carolina was having a real problem with the Confederate flag back about the time that he was there , so whether it had something to do with that , and the fact that he is a reader . He has just read more stuff than - I thought I was a reader , but he is really - he reads all of an author and then goes on to the next author and then , you know , this type of thing , and he is what I would consider an extremely well - read individual . So the fact that he had trouble finding people with the same interests that he had once he left Oak Ridge , that had something to do with it maybe . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : Were people in Oak Ridge ever worried during the integration of the schools ? I mean , you say you don 't remember many problems , but were they worried about violence ? Because they had all that violence in Clinton . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , yes , they really were . Everybody in the South was worried about violence . And I think as a result , a lot of Oak Ridgers stepped up to try to minimize any violence that might crop up or to try to stop it before it happened , this type of thing . What happened in Clinton was bad , and what happened in Mississippi was terrible , and it just is completely against everything you believe in . If you have a Christian faith , you can 't possibly approve of that sort of thing . And I cannot imagine any of the Jewish faith wanting that sort of thing either , that they would be just as appalled as - I said this badly by saying Christian faith , but my experience is coming from what I think is the Christian faith , but my Jewish friends would likewise be just as appalled by that sort of thing . So I think Oak Ridge definitely stepped up to try to avoid anything like that and to make sure that Clinton was safe going to school here , in the old Linden School , like they could do , and that that was one of the better things that came out of it . Mrs . Osborne : Right , at the old Linden . The new Linden had just opened , and so the old Linden School was not being used at that point . So they came and used that for a year . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : I have a few more questions about when you first came to Oak Ridge and just going back to the war years before you came to Oak Ridge . When you came to Oak Ridge , were you very much aware of the activity of security personnel , the guards ? Did you see much military security around ? Mrs . Osborne : I don 't remember ever noticing them . I mean , I was a high school kid , and I didn 't notice that . I had no reason to . I 'd never been in any kind of trouble . Mrs . Osborne : Yeah , my father always had a very large victory garden , and he was really good at growing all sorts of things , and my mother canned things and dried things . And that was before you had freezers , really , so you weren 't freezing things . Meat was rationed during the war , so I can remember - chicken was not , and I can remember they bought twenty - five slaughtered chickens and canned them one year , just in your big glass jars , so we used a lot of chicken that year . But Dad , yeah , Dad always had lots of tomatoes and corn and just your usual things . And it was out on the edge of town where he had the victory garden . Everybody was renting little spaces to have their gardens , and we would ride out there in the evening and pick and do different things . Dr . Hamilton - Brehm : That 's interesting . I didn 't realize people had them away from their homes . I always thought the victory garden would be at your house . Mrs . Osborne : No , no , it was bigger than that , than your backyard , so I mean you really were growing food . And we also collected the tinfoil from everywhere . If anybody saw a piece of tinfoil , you know , if somebody chewed a piece of gum , you automatically stripped the tinfoil off of it , and you always had a ball of tinfoil in your pocket or somewhere , in your purse , if you were a girl , and you just added that to the ball . And the same was true with string . Every little string , you wound it around . If anybody threw down a cigarette package , you immediately grabbed it up and the inside had tinfoil between the two paper layers , and so you stripped that off . But you saved every little bit this way . And the used cooking oil , saved for something . Mrs . Osborne : And I remember I got , one time , I managed to get a five pound bag of sugar for my mother for her birthday , without using - I didn 't have any rationing stamps , because my mother had all the ration books , and it was her birthday , and I was trying to get something that she would like , and I decided that a bag of sugar would be just perfect . I went to this little store where they knew me and knew my mother , and I asked them if I could possibly buy a bag of sugar , and somehow , I don 't know how , they let me have a bag of sugar , and I took it home and wrapped it up for mother 's birthday . She was tickled to death to get a five pound bag of sugar . Mrs . Osborne : Oh , I 'm sure . My parents would have been extremely happy . I was what , about twelve ? Or less than that . Mrs . Osborne : Well , Dad worked for the Atomic Energy Commission here in Oak Ridge , and came in ' 49 and went to work for them as the assistant head of the Budget Division , and stayed until about ' 63 . In ' 63 , he was transferred to Las Vegas , to the Las Vegas office - which , I never knew AEC had a Las Vegas office until then . They were there for a couple of years and then he was transferred to the Panama Canal Zone to work on the feasibility of building a second Panama Canal . This was before the first Panama Canal had been turned over to Panama . They knew - the United States knew that we had to turn it over to Panama , and they were wondering , they were afraid about what was going to happen . So they got to thinking about , what about the feasibility of building a second one , so that we would always have one . So Dad and several men from Engineering in the Army were the group picked to study this , and so he and Mother moved to Panama . And everybody else that worked on this project was military , so they lived on the military base there , except my mother and father were not military , so they had to live off the base , and the other ladies would let Mother know about how much she was missing by not being able to use the clubs there and the groceries there and all this sort of thing , and [ they would remark ] , " What a shame your house has cracks in it so the bugs come through , " and all this . So , anyway , Mother didn 't like it at all , but Dad loved it . He loved being out in the jungle , and they were trying to find where they would build one . And so they were just back in the jungle a lot of the time , hiking and trying to decide where would be a place that they could do this and how much would it cost , what would be - and they came up with the fact that it would not be a feasible thing to do , so that was their recommendation , was to not do it . Mrs . Osborne : I know when I went back to school as an adult , I heard a young guys talking about - over at the college - I heard a young guy talking about how the cancer rate in Oak Ridge was so high . His aunt had cancer now , and that she said it was due to all the radiation and everything in Oak Ridge , that everybody was getting cancer . And I said I didn 't think they were . And so then you realize that if you try arguing with him , you 're not going to get anywhere , that , just be quiet and let him say whatever he wants to say , and that 's the only way to go , that he had already made up his mind and was very busy sharing this with the other people in the class , that Oak Ridgers just had more chance of getting cancer than people anywhere else . Mrs . Osborne : They used to do that when I worked at the museum here . They used to ask if I lived in Oak Ridge , and then if I had any children , and they they 'd try to phrase it as nicely as possible , " Were the children all right ? " " Did they have two heads ? " or something like this , so I assured them they were all fine . Mrs . Osborne : Well , it has very good health care . I guess the fact that Oak Ridge has more to offer in the way of entertainment . They have an excellent Playhouse , they have an excellent Symphony Orchestra , they have ballet , a couple of pretty good ballet companies . They can perform with the opera company in Knoxville . |
I decided to start my New Years Resolution today so that I can end this year with my first change : ) Thoughtful Thursday , a day to stop and think , a day to get all the dirt out of the carpets and empty the septic tank of my life . Sounds pretty nasty right ? ? Well it was . . . . my life that is . . . it was very , very nasty ! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ This past holiday made me remember a time when I was young and should have been care free , unfortunately my evil egg donor made it full of care and worry and stress . My hair was so thin , constantly falling out , now I think I know why . For one , I was a hair puller . I would sit and just pluck the strands of hair out of my head . I wouldn 't think about it , I would just do it . It was a nervous habit , probably the beginnings of being a cutter , I just didn 't know that yet . I remember taking safety pins and pinning them through the skin of my fingers . . . why would I do such a thing ? ? I have no idea except that the evil egg donor made me want to control something . As an adult I can see now what I could not see then , I can see that if I had remained there , if I had not ended up in foster care I probably would have become a cutter . I probably would have done more to myself in order to be able to control the pain inflicted upon me . Beatings were a daily thing , like going to the bathroom . You knew it was going to happen , it was just a matter of what time of day she would feel the urge and how much she had held in . Was this going to be one of those days where it was a simple backhand across the room or the day where she grabbed the leather belt or metal yard stick and beat you until you couldn 't even feel it anymore . . . it was a mystery that you could be sure would be solved before the sun had set . She was the type of woman you feared , but you learned to out maneuver if you could . You learned her weaknesses . . . like she couldn 't run because she had short stubby legs and she was fat ! She couldn 't climb a tree and she couldn 't climb to the garage roof . You learned to use these to your advantage , get out as fast as possible , get up the tree and sit there waiting for her to realize she wasn 't getting you down and then go away . I was the cat and she was the dog , when I came down I would catch hell but for the moment I was safe and maybe , just maybe she would forget why or just how mad she really was and the beating would be less severe . Here is an example of my desperation I have never shared ! I was maybe 5 or 6 years old , it was a warm summer day and I was tired from haven been beaten . I had not learned the words to the song the egg donor wanted me to learn and I had received her wrath for my disrespect . I went outside to try to learn the song , I knew that I always memorized better while swinging on the swing , so I walked across the drive to that old swing hanging off the old green boards off the side of the house . I sat there swinging in the swing , wishing I could grow wings and just fly off that swing and to some far away place . In front of me was our huge driveway and in front of that was a clear view of the street . Occasionally a car would drive by and I remember thinking I wish one of those people would kidnap me and take me away from here . Then up on the hill I saw a big mac truck coming . I remembered how the egg donor had told me that truckers were bad people who would steal you if you were too close to the road when they drove by so I ran to the edge of the yard as he approached the corner . There on the corner was a lilac bush , beautiful and full of delicious smells . I ran just past it to where that truck would stop to make his turn . . . . . . and then I dropped my pants and I took off my shirt and I thought surely he will want me just like my daddy does , this will make him take me away for sure . I waved my precious parts to him , I tried to flag him down , I flaunted and flirted as best as I could , but the man just looked and then drove away . I began to do this on a regular basis , every new truck was a new opportunity . But alas , no pediphiles happened upon my corner except the sperm donor and evil brother # 2 . Ok , so it 's actually a good thing they never happened along or I probably would be dusty bones in a ditch somewhere instead of typing this out right now , but seriously at the time , that is how desperate I was . To stand naked on the corner trying to get a truck drivers attention , how sad and pathetic I must have looked . Why didn 't the neighbors say anything ? Why didn 't they ask questions ? Why did ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ And so I will wrap up this weeks issue of Thoughtful Thursday because my son is home on school vacation and he got some really great Christmas presents that I want to play with hehe I also need to get out food shopping before the New Year and today is a great day to do that . Happy 2011 to all my blog readers and to anyone who happens upon this post ! I hope I have helped someone today and if not , at least I have helped myself , which is the whole point of Thoughtful Thursdays . Enjoy your family and friends and remember , it 's not a good idea to dance naked in the streets , you might catch a cold lol Posted by Every year all around the world people make New Years Resolutions . In general , I am not among them because my thinking has always been " why disappoint myself ? " I tried making resolutions but they never seemed to work out and I would end up feeling like I had failed myself . I stopped making resolutions and laughed at those who made them . I would watch people say things like " I 'm going to lose that baby weight " or " I 'm going to be a better person " or " I 'm going to save more money " but then they would just continue with the same habits they always had and never succeed in changing . Perhaps I hang out around a lot of under achievers , or perhaps I just know a lot of losers . Possibly , I just don 't know a lot of people who have the will power to change . Whatever the situation , their failures have always fed my resolve to not resolve . They have always given me a reason to say " see that , it 's just not worth making a resolution " . However , this year , I think I might just try again . This year I want to help my son see that no matter how old we are we can make changes for the better , that we should all take responsibility for our previous actions and that we should change the things that aren 't showing us to be the best people we can be . I want to show him , that I can set an example and work hard to achieve a goal , that I can structure myself and my life to reach a goal . Perhaps if I can do that , then he can follow my lead and change too . Perhaps he can find it in himself to fight the tough fight and be the person he wants to be . I might fail at my task but if I try and my son follows my lead in trying then I will not be a complete failure , I will have succeeded in something . And so I will try , for him , so that he can see that change is possible . 1 . I will become a better parent by teaching my son he is capable of living without me . By this I mean that I will help him less so that he can do more for himself . I will let him try and fail until he gets there instead of just helping him or doing it for him to make his life easier . Although it will be hard to watch him struggle through some tasks , it will benefit him in the end when he learns that he really doesn 't need me to do as much for him as he thinks he does . I will strive to be a more patient mother , not yelling when he makes a mistake or messes something up . I will take a deep breath when he pushes my buttons so that he can relax and learn that mom is a loving mom and not so angry all the time . I believe this will be my hardest task of the year ! 2 . I will complete my studies and obtain my certificate to be a Medical Administrative Assistant . I am almost through this course , the medical terminology has been hard for me to learn and I have struggled in the memorization of all this . I was never very good at these kinds of things , but I want to make more money than I do currently and it seemed the only way to do that was to get out into the work force again . Of course in order to do that , after being out of the work force for 11 years , was to get some kind of education . I started the course in June of this past year and I want to be done with it by June of this coming year so I can start looking for work and making some " real " money . 3 . I will be a better wife to my husband . By this I mean that I will work harder to please him and make his life a more comfortable one . He works so hard for us , gives up his days off to make extra money , hurts his hands and body in order to provide for us , the least I can do is try to clean more , do more and be his sounding board when he needs me to be one . Sometimes I 'm not the best at listening to his grumblings , sometimes I forget that he 's not attacking me but is merely venting his frustrations , sometimes I forget that I am not his victim and I take things the wrong way . . . I know I need to stop doing that . He is not my " evil egg donor " and he will never strike me down regardless of what I do or say . 4 . ( a lead off of the last resolution ) I will learn to not live in fear . When I stop to look at myself , I have come to realize that many of my actions and reactions are based on irrational fears . Even though he has NEVER given me reason to believe he would harm me , I fear my husband . I know that my own ADD makes me forget to do things I say I will do , I forget to get stuff done and then run out of time in my day . I fear him coming home because the child inside me remembers when the evil egg donor would come home from work and beat me for forgetting a chore I was supposed to do . The child in me remembers a lot , is still remembering things all the time and that child needs to be comforted and taught that it no longer needs to fear the people around her . 5 . Finally , I WILL post my Thoughtful Thursday posts ! I have slacked off as of late and I notice a difference in my everyday thought process . I see myself holding onto the pain , letting it sit there and swell up inside me and I don 't release it . Hubby doesn 't like to hear about my childhood , he sees no reason to sit and recall the details of that horrid life I once lived . I don 't want to burden him with memories that he doesn 't want to hear about and so I will type it out , I will let it go and I will move on . Every week seems to bring about a new memory , something that happened so long ago . I see my son doing something and I suddenly remember doing that myself and my egg donors reaction . If I don 't write it out I begin to feel the anger growing inside me . Before long the anger is just sitting there waiting to lash out at the first person to cross me . . . . which unfortunately tends to be my son . I can not let HER mess with my parenting ! I refuse to allow her to invade my sons life any further . . . so in order to complete goal number one of being a better parent , I must succeed with this goal ! So sorry , I have been neglecting posting again but the holidays came and went so fast I can 't believe it ! Christmas 2010 : The days leading up to Christmas were awesome ! Orion tried so hard to be good and I found this great text message thing where you could have Santa Clause send a message of your choosing to your childs cell phone . So on Christmas Eve Eve Orion received a text from Santa telling him that he was going to try to bring that Nintendo 64 that he had asked for because he knew that Orion was trying very hard to be a good boy . Orions friend was over and was amazed when Orion received a text from the big man himself ! Orion had been very worried that Santa might not have gotten his letter in time to special order a Nintendo 64 for him so it really helped him calm down about it and enjoy himself a bit . On Christmas Eve morning , as is our tradition , Orion got to open one present . He opened a fun hotwheels toy that is a snap together truck / snowmobile . It actually has 25 different configurations and can be mad into anything from a big wheel truck to a racing snowmobile . He had a lot of fun with that for the day and it kept him well entertained . We baked sugar cookies and frosted with homemade frosting . Shortly before bedtime Orion took 2 benedryl since he knew he would have trouble getting to sleep . I read " Twas The Night Before Christmas " and " How The Grinch Stole Christmas " . We put out cookies and milk and a little note for Santa from Orion . Orion snuggled under the blankets and by 11pm he was finally sound asleep ( An AMAZING thing ! ) I stayed up and greeted Santa so that he didn 't set off the house alarm or the big 96 pound black lab lol Christmas morning , 5am , the little man is wide awake begging to go open presents . I made him stay in bed long enough for me to take the dog out to the bathroom and set up my video camera . He came out with wonder in his eyes and a smile on his face , Santa had obviously come since he had a stocking that was full to the rim complete with a snowy leopard stuffed animal ; ) He openeAfter playing with our presents for awhile , we went over to my in - laws house where Orion received a wii from his grandparents . . . spoiled rotten kid that he is lol Orion , on a whim , asks if he can spend the night with his grandparents and we said sure . Hubby and I went home to enjoy a quiet kid free Christmas night . 1 : 30am my phone is ringing . My heart is racing as I frantically wake up and run for the phone . Orion was homesick and realized he really would rather be home playing with his Christmas presents instead of at his grandparents house without them . NOT FUNNY kiddo , calling mom at 1 : 30 am only leads me to picture blood or death or both ! He wanted to ask me to pick him up nice and early the next morning . . . little bugger . I picked him up at 11am . As you can see I have changed my background to something more fitting the conditions outside . The day after Christmas brought us a wonderful blizzard of snow ! Everything is white and cold outside , just what winter is supposed to be . The blizzard messed up our driving plans to get up to NH to go snowboarding , so we 'll go this coming weekend instead once everything is nicely groomed and the roads are again safe to drive on . Now I just need to fix my siggy tag to match . . . it 'll probably take me awhile since I need to work and make up for all the time lost while I was sick . Orion will go back to school next week and hubby will be off at work and I 'll be able to relax and do some messing around with my paint shop pro . I hope to have at least 1 more post before the years ends , but just in case : So I thought that by now Orion would have been told by kids at school that Santa Clause is really his parents , I thought this year would be the year of him asking a lot of questions and losing that little piece of childhood . Amazingly he has not lost that belief . What he wants for Christmas more than anything else in the entire world is a Nintendo 64 console . Yes , my son loves the vintage video games systems and this is the one that will fill his collection . It 's also the only thing he asked Santa for this year . My husband did not want to spend the money on it , he was totally against getting him an old system for Christmas , my line of thought was that this might be the last year for him to believe and I could not let that belief die . . . so I got him the system and it will be here soon . Then the other day Orion and I were talking about Santa and Orion was wondering what kind of stuffed animal Santa was going to bring him this year . You see , every year Santa has topped the stocking with a stuffed animal and knowing that the boy still believed I wanted to buy a stuffed animal for the stocking but hubby said no way . It 's too babyish and that we had to stop buying him baby things . I tried to protest , but hubby put his foot down , no stuffed animals this year . But my boy believes and he is looking forward to the stuffed animal that Santa is going to bring . I tried saying things like " Don 't you think Santa might realize that you are 10 years old now and that you might not want a stuffed animal since it is kind of a little kid kind of toy ? " The boy replies , " No , I think Santa will know that I love my stuffed animals and look forward to them every year . " Guess what mom went out and bought against hubby 's best protests . . . . . . Yep I bought a stuffed animal and it will be topping his stocking on Christmas morning . If my boy expects Santa to bring him a stuffed animal then a stuffed animal he will get ! Other thoughts , well not a lot right now . I 'm just getting over being horribly sick with some kind of cold or flu . Orion seems to be coming down with it but he is fighting it . The hubby will probably come down with it for Christmas since that 's Murphy 's Law . I 'm still not 100 % but definitely doing better . I can 't wait to get out snowboarding again and be back on the mountain . It will be fun to watch Orion get back out there and learn to progress some more . I am looking forward to a good season on the slopes as long as I can get healthy enough to actually get out there lol . I know it 's only been a little over 10 years since he was born , but I after I took that photo yesterday I wanted to cry . He 's still sweet faced when he wants to be , or should I say when he wants something , but for the most part there is no more sweet faced baby boy left in my child . He 's looking more like a man than ever and although I can see the little boy hiding in the background he 's very quickly fading away . My baby isn 't a baby anymore and as I grow closer and closer to 40 I realize that my son isn 't the only one getting older . Unfortunately the more he looks like a man and the closer I get to my 40th , the more it all seems to be speeding up . Suddenly I am reevaluating my whole world , what I think , what I feel , how I feel about life when I was his age . My world is speeding up again and I am desperately searching for the brakes because I really need it to slow down . I headed for my in - laws to pick up Orion after getting up and on our way home Orion and I went and got our tree , we brought it home , set it up in the stand in the corner of the living room . We let it relax while we checked lights and set up the mantle decorations , a good 2 hours of work at least . We put the lights up , put all the ornaments up ( another hour at least ) and as I hang the very last ornament on the tree it begins to fall ! Yep the tree stand gave out and the tree was going to land on top of me and Orion fully decorated ! We 're talking a 7 1 / 2 foot balsam fir , big full branches and she wasn 't exactly light weight either ! I caught her mid - fall because I was not going to let my ornaments smash and I wasn 't going to let my kid get crushed . CUE THE SWEAR WORDS ! I used every bit of strength to push that sucker back into a standing position and had Orion stand on the couch and basically lean on the tree with all his weight ( which really is nothing compared to that tree ) while I crawled under her and tried to figure out what went wrong . I try tightening the bolts in the stand , tree still wants to fall over . I try undoing all the bolts , turning the tree and tightening them back in . . . . tree still wants to fall over . I grab the twine they used to tie the tree to the car and tie the tree to the mantle to keep it up while I start dinner because poor Orion is dying trying to hold up that tree for so long ! Hubby comes home , he tries to fix the stand and realizes there is no hope , the bolts are stripped out . We take all the decorations off the tree , take it out of the stand , put it in a new stand and try to get that one to work . . . . unfortunately this stand has a couple stripped bolts too and the tree still wants to fall over , and poor hubby is starving ! Hubby canabalizes the first stand and between the two he manages to get the bolts to work and the tree stands alone ! We ate dinner ( that amazingly I had not burned ) and then Orion and I took on the task of redecorating the tree ! The tree came home at 1 in the afternoon , she finally stood alone and fully decorated at 10pm ! I told hubby that never again will he come home the day after Thanksgiving to find a tree in the living room ! From now on , I 'm waiting for him ! Sissy is safe ! I am so happy this week knowing that Sissy finally realized that it was in her best interest to get away from that boyfriend of hers ! She has moved away from him and is now in an apartment with her daughter . It 's pouring rain outside , it 's a cold rain that creeps into your bones , your joints , your very soul . It makes everything seem so gloomy and makes me feel like crying right along with those clouds outside . It 's on these kinds of days where I find myself reflecting on my youth more than ever , I guess the cold rain brings out the depression in me and depression makes me do nothing but dwell on what a rough life I have had . I hate these kinds of days because it 's usually when I want to forget it the most . For instance today I woke up and it was cold in our bedroom , my son had crawled into the bed between me and hubby and was snug and cozy . I didn 't want to get up because I was remembering how when I was little I would have given just about anything to have the chance to cuddle with a loving parent on such a cold morning and I wanted to share that with my son so that he would never find himself waking up wishing he could of had that . I don 't want him to ever feel that he wanted something so simple and that his mother didn 't give it to him . What was it going to cost me to lay there and love my son ? What would it of cost her to love me ? The answer is simple . . . it costs nothing more than a push of the snooze button and another 9 minutes , a price that I gladly paid . As I lay there with him all snuggled up and warm next to me , I couldn 't help but remember the cold beds we slept in as children . How we had to melt snow on the potbelly stove , get it good and hot and then fill up some jars to make hot water bottles . We would put then under our covers to warm our sheets and sleep wrapped around them in hopes of staying warm . Lots of nights Sissy would sleep with me and we would curl up close so that we could keep each other warm . Sometimes the egg donor would forget to pay the electric bill and all the lights would be out for days on end , there was no oil for the heat so we had to use kerosene heaters and the potbelly stove . The pipes would freeze in the basement or the well would freeze up and so we had no running water . In those cold days we would have to get snow from the yard , melt it on the stove and use that to flush the toilet or for bathing . If there was no snow then we simply had no water and we would have to use a bucket in the bathroom and then take it out to the swamp to dump it . I remember that being Sissy 's job mostly , she would be so embarrassed having to carry a bucket of foul smelling mess out to the swamp to dump . I felt bad for her but at the same time I was thankful to not be her . Last night was trick or treating night , Orion and I went out with his friend Jessie and her mom . It was a quiet night , not a lot of kids out there so our kids got lots of goodies . . . probably enough to last an entire year ! Plus we had way too much left over so now I have to practice willpower over chocolate ! You know how hard it is to do that ? ? ? I have a major sweet tooth to begin with and now I have a butt - load of candy sitting here doing nothing but teasing and taunting me every second of the day ! The wild child has trouble with self control on his best days , say nothing about when he 's loaded up with sugar so he has to be monitored very closely when it comes to sugar intake . He has to be limited or he 'll be completely bonkers ! When you 're an abused child you think differently than most kids your age . You try not to think about 10 or 15 years down the road mainly because you 're too worried about what tonight will bring . You have to think in the moment , how will this decision now effect my life 5 minutes from now when the evil one finds out about it ? How can I do this without getting caught ? How can I cover this up so she won 't know ? You dread the moment she outsmarts you because she does that a lot . . . . afterall you are just a kid and she 's got a good 30 years of evilness on you . So you do what you can , what you feel you need to do , and you hope the evil one never knows . One of the biggest things I did that I hoped she would never figure out concerned her alcohol . She had a bottle of vodka that she loved and no one was allowed to even touch it ! You even looked at it and you got yelled at . Not even the sperm donor was allowed to touch her precious clear liquid . Since I knew how much she liked it , but also how mean she was after she drank it , I messed with her without her knowing . After she had gone to bed , or after school when she wasn 't home , I would take her bottle from its hiding spot , mark it with my finger and then dump some down the drain . Then I would go to the toilet with the bottle and a cup and I would refill it to the exact spot with toilet water . I would return it to her hiding spot making sure I set it back exactly as it had been when I removed it . I did that at least once a week , it was great fun watching her drink her toilet - watered - down - vodka ! I would find myself having to leave the room lest she catch me giggling and it got me smacked around . Then there was those bottles of budweiser she hid behind the couch . There was always a 6 pack there and they were always twist caps so you didn 't have to use a bottle opener . . . those I would actually pee in the toilet first then fill them ! I know , pretty gross , BUT SHE DESERVED IT ! It was my sweet revenge until I realized that Sissy was sneaking the vodka to deal with the sexual abuse she was suffering and Big Sis # 2 was sneaking the Budweisers . After that , I stopped because I didn 't want them to get sick and I knew that they were watering down her drinks to cover up what they were drinking . Sometimes it made me mad knowing they had taken away my own bit of revenge , but they were older and so they won . Of course I can 't help but wonder just how much toilet water and pee water those two actually drank and how they didn 't manage to get sick lol I recently told Sissy about that and she just laughed and said " no wonder that vodka tasted funny " At least she had a sense of humor about it , she could understand . What she couldn 't undeOf course I had my own way of dealing . . . I was a smoker . The sperm donor smoked camels with no filters and he spent so much time being drunk I managed to steal plenty of cigarettes off him . It all started when I was about 4 years old when the egg donor called us all into the kitchen . She lined us up and handed us each a cigarette . She lit them up and made us each smoke an entire cigarette by ourselves . It was supposed to teach us what a horrible habit it was , it was supposed to make us sick and make us never want to smoke again . Sissy puked something awful , poor thing ! Me , I rather enjoyed it . It relaxed me , calmed me , made it easier to deal with the stress of life . I smoked my cigarette and wanted more ! I found myself sitting next to the sperm donors chair waiting for him to sit his cigarette down so I could sneak it as he sat in a drunken stupor watching tv . He would always light up and then leave it sitting in the ashtray just burning , picking it up every now and again to take another puff . I was very good at sneaking puffs for myself here and there and as my addiction grew I started to steal cigarettes out of the pack . By the time I was 6 years old I was walking the road looking for soda cans and bottles to take to the store to redeem . Back then kids could buy cigarettes for their parents at the local country store , so I would redeem my cans and buy myself a pack a day . I would steal money from the egg donor and the sperm donor so that I could afford my habit . I was a pack a day 6 year old smoker . . . . pretty sad eh ? But it got me through , it helped me deal with the abuse . I would smoke right before bed every night knowing that in a few hours I would be woken by the sperm donor , given my bag of circus peanuts and then taken to the shed . The circus peanuts were to keep me quiet . I was told that it was my special treat . . . I recently found out in conversation that Sissy was told the same exact thing . . . it was her special treat . Funny how we kept those secrets to ourselves for so long and we never knew that the other w ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Just one thing today . . . a poem I wrote . It sums up pretty much everything I have in my head today . I wish I could put this to music and have someone amazing sing it to raise awareness about child abuse . Have a great weekend everyone and please . . . open your ears and open your eyes , the evil lives everywhere ! The problem is it 's very good at hiding ! Posted by Isn 't he just an amazing creature ? This praying Mantis was watching Orion and his friend take turns on Orion 's dirt bike earlier this afternoon . I spotted him looking around the tree at Orion as he waited for his turn . I snapped the photo then called the kids over to have a look . He was great to look at since he was cold which made him nice and slow . . . until the kids held him in their hands and he warmed up . Posted by I have someone who can make my day brighter , no matter how bad things seem , with just one simple smile ! His smile lights up my life and makes everything seem better ! Take a look and tell me you don 't want to smile too ! There she sits , alone on the wooden swing . Her bowl cut dirty blonde hair is messy , the dirt on her face is smudged with tears . Her glasses sit perched upon her face crookedly , her shirt is torn and looks as though it hadn 't been washed in many a days . She sits leaning over herself , hugging herself as though she has never been hugged by another . She is clearly suffering , in pain , but no one knows why . She will never tell this dirty little secret because if she did that might be the day she dies . . . . and in her heart she knows she must survive ! That day it had been a fun one . Her best friend and she had come up with the perfect plan to get together and play after school . They would each write letters to the others mother saying that it was ok for the little girl to ride the bus to her friends house to play for the afternoon . They had signed their mothers names and thought their plan was fool proof . The little girl was a little nervous , mother never let her go anywhere , not even across the street to play with the girl over there . She was always told she had plenty of brothers and sisters to play with and didn 't need to go to other kids houses . That afternoon she gave the note to her mother . She told her mother that her friend wanted her to come over and that it was ok with her mother . The mother took the note in her hand and read it , then she picked up the phone book and found the phone number for her friend . The girl thought to herself " oh no " and she knew she was going to need to hide . She thought frantically , trying to think of a place she could go where her mother might not find her , she knew she was in deep trouble . Her stomach turned as her mother clearly got an answer on the other side of the line , she could feel her heart pounding as her mother found out about the note she had sent home to her friends mother . As she tried to step away mother grabbed her by the hair on her head and held her there . . . too late she wasn 't fast enough ! As the phone was hung up the girl began to immediately beg for mercy . She said how sorry she was , that it had been her friends idea and she just went along with it . She cried out as she was thrown to the floor knowing that the pain had only just begun . The mother screamed at the child , mother was embarrassed , the girl had made her look like a fool and she was not in the least impressed . She was crying as the mother yelled " Stop crying ! You cry , you get more ! " but the girl could not stop crying and so the mother kicked her in the ribs , in the stomach , the girl curled into a ball hoping she could protect herself . She was kicked in the back , in the legs , anywhere the mother could kick . Then when it stopped she was picked up by the hair on her head and thrown out the door where she was told to get out of her mothers sight . She staggered down the steps and over to the edge of the house where the wooden beam held the swing . And so there she sits on the wooden swing , sad and crying and clearly in pain . She suffered 2 broken ribs , numerous bruises and another blow to her self esteem . She would never gt to go to that friends house , nor to any other friends house . She never again attempted to trick her mother like that , she had learned her lesson . I 've been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting this past week . I have listened to Sissy tell me about her boyfriend who hit her so hard he knocked her over and sprained her hip . She left him , told me she wasn 't going to go back unless he got help . . . she was back living with him within a week . She said all the classic things . . . he hadn 't meant to do it , he loved her , she loved him , she couldn 't live without him . She wants to help him get better . I don 't know how she can live the life we lived yet live with a man who abuses her and hurts her . I don 't understand how she can 't be stronger than that . And a good thought for today . . . because this is a special day to me : ) Today is October 15th . . . . 15 years ago my husband came home from work , got down on bended knee as I washed some dishes in the sink and asked me to be his wife . I 'm so glad I said " YES ! " Have a great weekend everyone . Remember you don 't have to be a victim , you too can be a survivor . It 's all in how you look at your life . . . . will you remember the bad things because they make you who you are or will you look at them to know what not to do and how they make you what you are becoming ? You can be what you want to be , who you want to be , you are not destined to be the victim unless you make it your destiny . He wakes up in the morning grumpy and grouchy . . . . put food into him and he turns into a human child . He comes home from school grumpy and grouchy . . . put food into him and he turns into a normal human child ! I have come to the conclusion that whenever he is grumpy and grouchy I should just feed him and he 'll turn that attitude around in minutes ! Of course this means my food budget has to go up because he is amazingly hungry after school ! After school , walk in the door , grab 3 slices of cheese from the fridge , run off to the living room to turn on Tom & Jerry . Suck down cheese like there 's no tomorrow and complain that he 's still hungry . Give him a large bowl of SunChips , he sucks those down in about 10 minutes time and again complain he 's still hungry . Give him a fully loaded ham and cheese sandwich which disappears in about 10 minutes flat . . . the complaining begins again . Give him a large piece of cake . . he 's finally happy and feels full which is good because we need to take care of homework so that we can go bowling . Take him bowling . . . he 's hungry so he gets a bag of cheetos from the vending machine . Once those are gone he needs more money cause he 's still hungry ! He gets a hot dog and sucks that down pretty fast too . Get him home and guess what ? . . . YEP he 's starving lol Give him a large bowl of smartfood popcorn and he enjoys that and then complains about having to brush his teeth for bedtime because . . . you guessed it . . . he 's still hungry ! Gave him another large piece of cake and sent him to bed . When he gets up he 'll be starving once again and the food fight will start all over lol I sat there disgusted and appalled , dumbfounded and amazed all at the same time ! First of all , what company would even sell such an item made for children , second what mother , in her right mind , would buy that for her daughter to wear at any age say nothing about a 9 or 10 year old ! In this day and age , with the knowledge that there are pediphiles everywhere , why on earth would anyone want to bring attention to her daughters butt ? I just don 't understand the mentality ! Why do we want our children to grow up so fast ? Why do we want them to be miniature adults and wear clothing that asks for the wrong kind of attention ? How can these mothers not see that they are asking for trouble when they allow their daughters to dress in that manner ? Can you imagine ever putting that on your daughters behind ? I am a child abuse survivor , perhaps that makes me overly protective but seriously this just seems wrong on so many levels ! I can only hope that I never see that childs face on the local news because she 's been abducted , raped , murdered or some other awful thing ! Look around you and think for just one moment . Look at how your children are dressed , look at how their friends are dressed , look at how grown up they look wearing their Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana outfits . Look at how society sexualizes children before they hit puberty , look at what our children are being taught about their bodies before they even need to know the information . I see it everyday at the playgrounds , at the school when I pick up my son , at the mall , it 's everywhere . Little girls being dressed like little women , what message are they being sent ? Mini - mini skirts and skinny jeans on little girls may seem cute and it may be tempting to ohh and aww over how grown up they look , but why do they need to look that way ? Why can 't little girls just be little girls ? As I mentioned Orions hamster passed away and that brought back all those sad feelings about the cat Sparky and so we have been dealing with all that . Orion did go out and buy himself a new hamster but soon found out why mom said it wasn 't really a good idea . . . you can not replace one pet with another no matter how cute it is . He likes the new hamster , but he did not fix the sadness of losing Bounce . Last week I also had a Parent / Teacher meeting at the school . The teachers asked me if he was on medication at all these days because they do not see it working at all . 18 mg of Concerta clearly is not enough . He 's distracted , fidgety , bouncy , and pretty much all over the place . Of course I had expected this response from them and was basically waiting to hear it from them before calling the doctor to get a different dosage . I have seen him at home on the 18 mg and I knew it was not going to be enough . Of course hubby didn 't want to up the dosage for 2 reasons . . . 1 ) he 's afraid that a higher dosage of a different stimulant will only cause the same moodiness we had before on the higher dosage of Adderall ( Orion has been such a happy boy on the 18mg , it 's nice to see ) and 2 ) he doesn 't want to spend the money on the co - pay for another bottle of medicine when he haven 't gotten through this first bottle . Of course I can not , in my right mind , send him to school with only 18mg in his body for an entire month just because we don 't want to spend the money . . . he 'll fall behind and have way too much to catch up on . I can 't allow it to happen ! I spoke with the pediatricians office and we are basically doubling his dosage so I can give him 2 of the 18mg to use up the bottle . On 2 pills he 's much more stable , in control of his actions and much easier to deal with . Then this past Thursday our older cat Rex came home after being attacked by a coyote ! He has some good bite wounds and some bruising . Nothing is broken but I am worried about him none the less . He 's almost 15 years old and weighs 30 pounds . . . NO FOOLING ! He loves to be outdoors hunting and chasing rodents . . . I worry because usually he 's fighting me to get outdoors and the past few days he 's done nothing but lay on his pillow in the basement . We 're giving him antibiotics and hoping for the best . The skin on his belly is bright red and hot to the touch suggesting some kind of infection , we 're hoping the antibiotics will work for him and kill off whatever is in there . Of cI did take Orion to a new playground yesterday . It just opened up last month and according to the newspapers it 's the largest eco - friendly playground in the country . It 's an elaborate 10 , 000 - square - foot playground made out recycled plastic milk jugs and soda bottles ! Even the base for the ground is made out of the milk jugs and soda bottles and supposedly ( although I don 't want Orion testing it out ) can absorb a fall from a height of 9 feet . Orion had a good amount of fun until he saw a bunch of yellow jackets flying around and then he wanted to go home . . . he 's terrified of yellow jackets ever since he got stung a few years back . Anyway , I am hoping to get him back there often since it 's nice and new and clean . . . and eco - friendly . That 's about it for news this week . I 'm sorry there was no Thoughtful Thursday again but as I mentioned that 's the day the cat came home all banged up so that wiped everything from my mind . . I didn 't even facebook LOL I promise next week I 'll have something for ya : ) This is my hubby Steve . Steve is the love of my life , my soul mate , my best friend . Some days we fight like cats and dogs but we never go to bed angry and we always make up before moving on to anything else in our lives . We always work it out in the end . We 've been together for 20 years , May 3rd 2011 was 20 years we have lived together , loved together , been together . May 3rd also marked our 15 year wedding anniversary . Hubby is my everything and I couldn 't make it through my day to day existence without him . This is Orion , my meaning , my reason for being . He is my destiny , my proof that the cycle does not have to be repeated ! He 's my mini - me , my laughter , my joy , my ADHD boy . I used to call him my Little Bugaboo , now he 's my Wild Child , my Grammy Grace would have described him as " Full of piss and vinegar " and it would have been a compliment . Some days he tests my patience but never my love which is unwavering and grows more everyday . I never thought I could feel so much for one person , he 's shown me that I was very wrong and I feel more than is imaginable ! I love being a mother , I love being HIS mother and I wouldn 't trade this life as his mother for anything in the universe ! |
Posted on June 12 , 2016 by Jessie I slept in this morning . Or should I say that I slept twice ? Waking up just a little while before my alarm would go off , I was still tired , and went back to sleep , finally getting up some time between 8 and 9 . There was a lot on my invisible list of things to do today . I started this morning according to my typical routine : take care of the basic necessities such as toilet and water , and then spend time in prayer and reading my Bible ( or these days , going through the Sabbath school lesson ) . As I was headed out with the laundry , the neighbor 's cat greeted me , asking for some lovings and some breakfast . I thought breakfast would do this morning , but the cat still wanted to rub , so I pet it and continued filling the washing machine . The washing machine is a manual one . I switch each cycle : fill , spin , drain , repeat , and then take the wet clothes and put it into another part , a spinner , and then take the clothes and put it on the line . During the early fill cycle , I grabbed some chop sticks from the outdoor water closet ( which we are using for storage ) and picked up some pieces of trash from the yard . The exercise and the air did me some good , as well as the beautiful green around me . During another cycle , I looked in and under the lemon and lime trees again . Finding one lime that I had seen yesterday , I picked it and put it inside , and then looked for more . Nothing , at least nothing that I could find . All seemed to be going well . I washed the lime and prepared some lime and thyme chick peas with the remaining chick peas from Friday . On Friday evening I had made dumplings by steaming spring rolls , and decided to do so again this morning , as it seemed it would be less work and require less attention than frying them in the rice cooker and I did not feel strongly inclined to deep fry this morning . I know that whatever is frying on the hot plate needs to be watched carefully , and turned off and on and off again and back on and off and repeat however many times it takes before the food is cooked . One day , just a few minutes in to heating the oil , the oil in the pan burst into flames ( or was it the pan itself ? ) , and there were a few threats after that also . Usually , however , when food is boiling in water or steaming , it 's fine . The steamed spring rolls went through two cycles , and it was getting close to time to switch the laundry to another cycle . The spring rolls looked fine , but I wanted to keep them warm and give them extra cooking time , just in case , so I turned them on again , and went outside to switch cycles on the washing machine . While waiting the short time before I would switch to another cycle , I became preoccupied in the yard again . I had unlocked the gate a few minutes ago , and had opened some of the windows in the studio . It seemed that I heard plastic crinkling , and wondered if the cat let itself in ( as it does know how to open the front door if it 's not latched ) , or if a person had slipped in while I was out back . But no , it couldn 't be . As I looked into the window , I saw nothing , but then noticed something … I smelled smoke , and that plastic sound sounded like something else that was familiar … Oh no . I went to the back window , where I could look in and see how the pot on the hot plate was doing . I forgot to check it for water , and it must have been empty ( or very near empty ) . Sure enough , bright orange flames were licking the edge of the steamer and the lid . I had to think quickly . I must have prayed , but if I didn 't , the Lord knew I needed help and wisdom . I almost panicked , but realized that I needed to remain calm and think logically , and I did . I believe the Lord helped me . I thought of a few things that I could do , but the Lord helped me to think reasonably . Assessing the situation , and that the studio was full of smoke , I realized that one of the first things I needed to do , if possible , was to unplug the hot plate . The box for electricity is next to the hot plate , and the box with the switches is far above on the wall , so I couldn 't just turn off the electricity , and I had to reach past the fire to unplug the hot plate . It seemed safer than hitting the button to turn it off , considering the closeness of the fire . I worried that I might get burnt , but if I didn 't send up a prayer for help and protection , the Lord heard my thoughts anyway . I reached beside the hot plate , and back , keeping my body and my clothes as far away as possible and acting carefully , though quickly , to pull the plug . The flames were still burning . Beside the hot plate was a wooden mortar and pestle . I removed that and put it in the sink before it could catch fire . I learned from last time that , when removed from the heat , the fire might die out . It was pretty much contained in the metal pan , though the flames were leaping dangerously high , about 4 - 6 inches or so up out of the pot . I grabbed that same frying pan that had caught fire last time . When it had caught fire , I had removed it from the hot plate by its long handle and went to bring it outside , but the flames were so dangerous that I froze . The oil dripped onto the floor and the fire went out . Now , I turned the pan upside down and set it over the flames . They flickered and continued to burn . I lifted the pan , and the flames continued , so I put the pan down over the flames again . They flickered and burned for a little while , and then puffed out of existence , leaving a charred , black mess . Actually , my spring rolls weren 't burt that badly , so perhaps the flames hadn 't even been going for very long , but my pan is a mess . I still need to finish cleaning it ( and have already scrubbed it some ) . Though only one side of the spring rolls were burnt , the outside of the rest turned yellow , and I wasn 't sure if it was safe to eat , so I dumped them . But before I did that , the windows and doors had to come open . At first , I only opened what I could think of with the screens closed , and turned on the fans , and opened the doors , but then I realized I needed to open more , so the screens went open and the doors were fully opened , and the fans blew the smoke out . It 's not good to be in smoke for so long . I covered my mouth and nose , really wishing that my mask was out where I could find it easily . I had to go outside and away from the studio to get fresh air , and then came back in , covering my mouth and nose and holding my breath through some of it and grabbed a chair and brought it outside . Then I went back for a book , holding my breath and covering my mouth and nose . Even when I was opening the windows , I had to hold my breath , cover my mouth and nose , and stick my head out for air . I should have opened my bed room windows too , but I was worried about wasps , so they stayed closed until I realized my bedroom still smelled smoky . After retrieving a book , my tablet , and the chick peas , I had some lunch outside . I didn 't do this all at once , giving a little time in between for the smoke to go out , and to take fresh air into my lungs . I ate my brunch outside while reading , and then went in for another book . Around that time I opened my bed room windows . The smoke was clearing well . I turned the fan toward my bed room , and then went back outside to read . But the experience outside was beautiful . I listened to birds and saw butterflies fluttering by . It was so relaxing , and the fresh air , sunlight ( through the clouds ) , and good , simple food was refreshing , and I felt some energy restored to me . For once , after many days of not feeling well ( most days , but maybe not all ) , I feel well again , and think I can go a while longer , and I learned from the experience … hopefully what I learned will stick , and hopefully that won 't happen again , but I did learn , and it did me some good ( even though I could have died ) . Fire is dangerous , and so is smoke . What I did , going for a book , was not necessarily safe , and ( especially in America ) you may need to call the fire department even if you put out the fire , to report that a fire happened . Do some research beforehand . Prevention is the best medicine , but it 's better to be prepared than sorry , or dead … I 'm so thankful that God protected me through all this , that the fire is out , and that the walls and floor here aren 't made of wood . Whew ! Posted on May 21 , 2016 by Jessie I had just decided to adopt the gecko and to name it " Flash " , at least until I could get it outside . When I went to wash my dishes this evening , I found Flash in my garbage can . The gecko was in a vulnerable position , and seemed to either be having difficulty getting out , or else it was trying to hide underneath the trash . I picked up the garbage can to bring it outside , but it seemed I would have to either actually pick up the gecko and place it outside , or else shake it out of the trash can . I wasn 't sure it was safe to put Flash so close to the door , as she / he might easily come back in , so I also hesitated there . There wasn 't anything particularly nasty in the garbage can , mostly plastic and some tissue , and one small box . I didn 't want to shake the contents out onto the walk way and have to pick it all back up , so I began to remove the contents of the trash bag , and then took the bag out to try to remove the gecko , but flash climbed to the top and jumped out of the bag . It hesitated when reaching the broom , which was laying down on the floor by the back door . I was hoping to get Flash to run to the back door , which I had just cracked open for it ( but even before , when it seemed to start in that direction , Flash should have been able to make it outside ) . But Flash climbed the wall and ran behind the counter . I moved the counter and tried to gently prod Flash back in the direction of the door . Instead , it ran under the rolling bins . I knew it was dangerous , and maybe it wouldn 't have hurt to wait and try again another day . I had hurt at least one other gecko by moving the bin while it was underneath , because it got caught in the wheel , I think . I was worried for Flash as I moved the bins , looking . Flash moved out from underneath one of the bins . I noticed the red trademark of blood when a gecko 's tail is severed , and its foot also looked damage . I still hope that it was just because of the lint stuck to the foot . I looked over to where the bin had been , to see a thin , pale tale wiggling on the floor like a worm . I moved the bin that Flash had run underneath , but Flash was not there . Fearing the worst , I removed the bin that was on top ( for it was two bins stacked ) , and then turned the bottom bin on its side . Flash was twisted in something perhaps similar to the human fetal position ( except on its stomach ) near the wheel . It looked alive , and perhaps it was at this time that I noticed the foot . I decided to try picking Flash up , and covered my hand with a plastic bag from the trash . Flash wouldn 't have it , and managed to escape my grasp ( I was also trying to be gentle so as to not hurt it further . ) . I considered putting Flash in some sort of container to nurse it back to health , but it didn 't seem safe or practical , and I don 't have an aquarium . Flash began to run again . This time , back to the wall . I prodded it with a broom ( and feel guilty for actually touching it with the broom and hope I didn 't hurt it more , considering also that these brooms have softer bristles than the ones in America , being that these are made of a soft grass , I think ) . It ran toward my room , and I was afraid that it would go in , and steered it away . Instead of going toward the back door , which was cracked open at risk of letting other creatures in order to let Flash out , Flash ran toward the front door instead , and hid behind a white board which was propped against the wall . I shut the back door , and then returned to the white board . Many termites have been gathering outside , and last night quite a few were inside , so I had put a blanket at the bottom of the door to try to minimize the amount of critters that might crawl in from underneath . Though it was already dark and the termites were gathering , I moved the blanket and opened the door for Flash , but when I went to move the white board , Flash was not behind it . Instead , I saw its head poking out from underneath , and worried that I had squished it , but tried to be careful with the board . Flash , still alive , wriggled out from underneath , but wouldn 't go toward the door , even when prodded by the broom . Yesterday I had seen a snake in the yard , on the left hand side . I don 't want Flash to be eaten by a snake . Though I want Flash outside , I want it to have some chance to survive . The snake might have been in a tree , but I still thought Flash 's chances were better in a tree , so first I started for the tree to the right - hand side of the studio . Then I went to the left - hand side , toward a bigger tree , and not the one that I had seen the snake slither to ( thought he possibility of the snake being in the tree was possible ) . I hesitated , and decided not to getting bitten by the snake myself . I dipped the bucket into the fish pond , hoping Flash would go for a little swim , but Flash didn 't want to go , and I didn 't want it to drown . I did want to clean Flash up a bit , and was hoping to get the lint off of its foot , so I brought the bucket to the hose , and proceeded to pour water over the gecko . I 'm not sure if I succeeded in getting off the lint , but Flash seemed to respond to the water more than it did to the broom . Still , it didn 't want to leave the bucket . I shook and beat the bucket , because I didn 't want to touch the gecko … that poor gecko … Finally , between the hose and the shaking , Flash plopped into the mud . I checked to see if it was belly - up , or head - up , and Flash was on its feet . Relieved , I gave him a little more water , though somewhat more gently , hosed down the bucket , and went inside . I don 't know if Flash will survive , but hope that it can recover the energy and escape the predators . There should be plenty of termites and ants for it to eat , if a gecko 's diet consists of such things . My wish for flash : please survive . I realize that I could have minimized the poor creature 's suffering , and my own , and that it would have been far less messy if I had just shaken the trash out into the walkway and picked it up , or if perhaps I had left the trash can outside . Then Flash might have been able to crawl out on its own , and disappear into the night . The gate should keep the dogs out , so they wouldn 't be there to go through the trash , and there wasn 't too much to attract bugs . Why did I worry ? As for picking it up , I had to pick up almost every piece of trash anyway , though I probably could have just dumped it from the can into another bag . That bag is outside now anyway . Posted on May 19 , 2016 by Jessie I returned from Bangkok a couple of weeks ago on Friday morning , and haven 't knowingly eaten anything with milk or eggs since we finished our staff lunch that same afternoon , except for some egg yolk that contaminated some sliced vegetables that were given to me as leftovers . A plate of boiled eggs and fried tofu was also offered , but I declined it . While I can 't say that I 'm ready to give up honey yet , the arguments against the consumption of honey are becoming more and more appealing . I drizzled some on my peanut butter bread yesterday morning , and threw away three slices of bread in the evening when I went for more and discovered that , at some point , ants had gotten inside the lid . I didn 't see any in the honey , but something didn 't taste quite right that morning . Ants are everywhere ( except , thankfully , for my bed , at least most of the time ) . They even come and harass me while I work or play at the computer , climbing onto the desk . I found them yesterday under my pots , and a few days ago they were all over the tiny shelf in the water closet where I keep my toiletries . When I try to prepare fruit ( which has been my main sustenance , along with noodles last week and bread this week ) , I need to move the plate into the fridge in between fruits , and they nip my feet while I wash the dishes . Too often , I find them floating in my drinking water , though less often since I put plastic over the tap . The plastic bag was installed to keep an invading gecko from contaminating the tap . On account of the dangerous temple dogs that threatened me the first time I tried to walk to church alone , I 've been afraid to venture more than a few feet from the gate , and the yard is very small , but that gecko is like a personal trainer that appears in about the same place almost every evening , sees to it that I get a good workout chasing it around the kitchen , and then seems to just vanish . It 's left me questioning whether it 's really there , or whether it 's a spirit come to harass me or a hallucination , but the ants ( which apparently can 't all be killed by cornstarch and which eat gecko dung ) were probably going after some gecko dung when they swarmed the bowl that I stacked my pots on ( until yesterday evening , when I moved them ) . Of course , I 'm sure you know I don 't want to kill this gecko . I feel bad when I do hurt them . I grab the broom or a duster and try to chase them to the door or the window , but it doesn 't always work . I 've managed to drive a few away , probably and unfortunately hurting at least a couple in the process , but this one is very tricky . Mangos are in season . We have two or three mango trees which are drooping with mango . I think tomorrow I 'll ask about checking their ripeness . Mangos are also cheap at the market , and I 've been enjoying the sweet yellow ones that have just enough tanginess and a texture that is reminiscent of flan . I 've also tried sapodilla , and would like to stash the rest in the freezer . I can 't tell when it 's too ripe . The taste is like caramel , but also seems to have a hint of alcohol flavor , like vanilla flavoring or something , I think . I kind of like it . It 's something I might try one more time , perhaps with help in ( or after researching ) selection and preparation . The first try was the best . After that , it 's been somewhat disappointing . I 'd still like to try it in some homemade ice cream or a homemade smoothie , but dates are better . Here 's another ant that was crawling on my keyboard . They 're tiny , red , biting things , nasty little critters . If only they didn 't bite , come after my food while I 'm preparing it and / or eating , and stayed out of the water , then I might be able to ignore them , except when they 're crawling on my toothbrush , toothpaste , hairbrush , etc … I haven 't been feeling well , especially since some time ago in Bangkok , but have been feeling better since abandoning the eggs and dairy , cutting back significantly on pastries and other unnatural sweets , and eating more raw fruit . A friend brought me some lychee twice , and I have been enjoying the taste . The first time she brought it was the first time that I 've eaten it fresh . Canned , I didn 't care for it . It was boring , kind of like canned pears ( although I like pears more now than I did back when I tried canned lychee , though I did like canned pears then , sometimes ) , but fresh it 's totally different , and juicy and delicious . It seems jackfruit is also in season , too . We found some at the market that was ripe , a nice salmon color , and I really enjoyed it . I like to eat it washed in water because it not only does away with the germs , but seems to make it more juicy . I used to brush my teeth with the water coming from the bathroom sink , but have been using drinking water this past week and wonder if that also has had a positive impact on my health . We 're told over and over that the water here isn 't clean and should only be used for washing . I know that , but old habits are hard to break , especially when you don 't see the contaminants ( except for the obvious stinky green stuff that grows on your retainer , which you also wash in that water ) after it sits in its container for a day or two . Since returning , the smell coming from the bathroom faucet and hoses has become even more suspicious , and I 'm hoping that nothing died in the pipes ( and especially not in the well ) while I was away ( nor after I returned ) . After all , I still wash dishes and myself with that water . Change is coming . I 'm in the process of renovating this website , but changes are happening in my life , too , and I trust that it will all work out for the best . Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I shouldn 't have been so quick to take on the project of renovating this site , but should have waited to consider if I could accomplish the task before I started it . We 'll see what happens . For now , at least I know I can still add new posts as I work on moving things around , because the people who care have probably subscribed , and will have the new posts delivered to them even if they 're not posted directly onto the site . That 's pretty convenient , isn 't it ? Thanks for sticking with me through all of this . Posted on April 21 , 2016 by Jessie How did this happen ? Please forgive me . I have backslidden severely , and am not sure that the damage is repairable , except that " I can do all things through Christ [ a ] who strengthens me . " ( Philippians 4 : 13 , NKJV ) It 's not that I had ever truly abandoned the use of eggs and milk completely nor entirely , but I had been so much more careful , and doing so much better . I had even been doing better about avoiding spicy , vinegar , baking powder , chocolate , soy sauce , and other harmful foods . When I did crack open an egg , it was mainly for the sake of my health , and only free - range ( an hopefully organic ) eggs and I didn 't even enjoy the fried eggs , though I think I may have liked the boiled ones … Then I came here , and began to eat eggs a little more freely , because I perceived that the eggs were local and the chickens were obviously free range ( and the baby males not thrown into a grinder . Then I began to eat quail eggs and conventional eggs , but not every week . I even backslid to the point of willingly eating things that contained milk … How hypocritical is it to eat bread that contains milk and egg and washing it down with soymilk ? Too many say you can justify choices that violate the naws of nature and health if it is the healthiest thing available , if it 's necessary for survival , to avoid hurting the feelings of others , to be a loving witness to others to show that you care about them by eating what they offer you , and other excuses . I have tested this theory and proven it false . What is a balanced diet ? A balanced diet won 't leave you feeling weak , tired , sick , and in pain , with tender spots that you can actually touch , where even the application of water causes pain . I still haven 't corrected my diet completely , but I am learning that I can 't just eat whatever I want without consequences . Please forgive me , my vegan followers … I 'm trying to get back on the right track . Please forgive me if , while in Bangkok , I eat some eggs with pumpkin because it won 't be as painful as the spicy tofu , and because it will give me some needed vitamin A and B - 12 . Please forgive me if I eat a bun that contains a tiny bit of milk and egg because it is gentle on my stomach and will help with the healing process in my insides , and more nutritious than the plain white rice . Please be patient with me . I 'm working my way back to the total vegetarian ( vegan except for honey ) diet because I do believe it is the best for me , except that it may be necessary for me to eat eggs occasionally , but I know I 'll have no excuse for the milk … Maybe in a few weeks you 'll see some more vegan recipes ( except that I 'll still use honey , because it 's better than certain other sugar and will help with the healing process ) . Posted on January 26 , 2016 by Jessie ^ That bag of green circular shaped items is the noodles that I bought at the daily market . Below them to the left are the quail eggs . To the right is my favorite deep fried snack that I probably keep going on about , and in the middle are the bananas that a friend gave me . Anything in this picture not in a bag wasn 't from this shopping trip . Yesterday and today have been cold , rainy days . I needed to do some laundry , and since it 's still wet and raining outside , I washed enough clothes for a couple days in the bathroom sink and hung them in the hâawng - náam ( literally - " water closet " , referring to the bathroom ) and my hâawng - naawn ( literally - sleep room , referring to the bedroom ) . I had trouble getting to sleep last night , for a few reasons . We went to buy things yesterday . I definitely needed to get some fruits and vegetables , as I was down to one head cabbage and some garlic for fresh vegetables , and was out of fresh fruit , except for two bunches of bananas that a friend gave to me , and half a papaya ( which was from a friend of a friend ) left over from breakfast . I was also out of tofu and peanuts , out of which I had been making peanut butter , and I was hoping to eat a good supper of street food from the stands at the Monday market . Because of the rain , we suspected that there wouldn 't be as many vendors at the Monday night market , but we were going to the daily market ( which is under a shelter ) anyway . I bought some fried vegetable spring rolls for supper . The vendor cut them in half and served them in a bag with a thin pointed stick and a small bag of sweet and sour sauce ( which I did not eat ) . I used the stick to pick up the spring rolls and ate them as I walked around the market . I didn 't know what to expect at the Monday market , so I bought enough fruit and vegetables for the week , and it 's likely that at least some , such as the carrots , should last me more than a week . The first thing I purchased was a bag of quail eggs for 50 baht . I decided to get some potatoes , but while I was digging around to look for ones of good quality ( I am fussy . ) , I saw a roach hiding in the pile . I poked at it with a potato and it moved , so I know it was alive . Disturbed , I covered it up ( I 'm not sure if I did the right thing . ) . I didn 't want to offend nor disappoint the lady who was selling the potatoes , so I stuck with the two I had picked out , and also selected a bag of 3 baby corn . She encouraged me to get a bag of mushrooms , too , which I gave away before leaving the market . At another stand I selected a few carrots . The vendor weighed them , and urged me to get one more , which I did . I was disappointed with the red onions . I bought a bag of tiny red onions , and saw some later that I would have preferred to get instead , if I hadn 't already gotten some . It was difficult to find some that looked in good shape for a price that I thought they were worth , and these did not . I also bought some other cooking onions , and I think the quality and price were alright . Another one that disappointed me was the fruit . I purchased a small package of small oranges for 20 baht , and 4 of them were rotten . I saw what looked like better deals ( maybe not cheaper , because they were larger ) at other stalls . The oranges were also soft , so they were suspicious . However , when I ate the oranges today , I realized that they are probably mandarin oranges . The softness does not mean rottenness , as they do not seem rotten , and are sweet and delicious , and do not have too many seeds . I like them . I found a small bag of tomatoes for 5 baht , which I thought was a reasonable deal . We had gotten into the car when I remembered that it was the only place the missionary family that brought me knew to buy some msg free noodles of the similar - to - instant - ramen variety . I compare them to Chinese noodles . We found one package of dusty green noodles , but the bag held air , and the noodles were vegan and msg free , colored green with pandan powder , which is from a plant , and didn 't have all the garbage that your typical instant - ramen in the US was ( it 's not the same thing , but that 's what I compare it to , though they also have Chinese noodles in the US , so if you 've seen those curly Chinese noodles , it 's a better comparison ) . I was disappointed and disturbed that the packaging was dusty and looked a little damaged , but looking back , I realize that it was a blessing and a token of God 's love that there was one package there waiting for me . I 'm also thankful that our leader showed me the ones . I was also hoping to find starfruit . I had seen some before , but was disappointed not to find any . Maybe it was there somewhere ? Oh well , it was a blessing , our leader 's patient and helpful wife looked up what kind of a threat roaches posed to health and hygiene , and didn 't find much , and I washed the potatoes anyway . Besides all that with the roach business , I realize that roaches and other bugs could be crawling all over the produce even when we can 't see it , it 's just that seeing it disturbed me . It was not such a bad experience after all , though I do think , after going to the Monday market on a rainy day , that I 'll stick with the Monday market and the Thursday market for fresh produce and other things , even if it 's raining , but may go back to the daily market to get more noodles ( I cannot say for sure , as I have not tried the noodles yet , and I cannot predict the future anyway ) . I think that tomorrow I will make a noodle soup . ^ Carrots , apples , and oranges from the daily market on the right . Greens ( I 'm not sure , whether I got these thin greens at the Monday market or daily market , now that I think about it . ) in the upper left corner . The bag in front on the left toward the middle is sweet potatoes from the Monday night market , and I think that 's red onions in the lower left corner . There 's other things there , too , but I don 't remember what it was and can 't identify it right now . It might be the other bag of onions and some unseen items , but it might not . My dad and stepmother sent me a beautiful shiny butterfly birthday card with a carefully selected cash gift of clean bills . ( ( My dad is very kind , thoughtful , careful , patient and generous toward me . I love him . I would love him even if he wasn 't , but he is . I love my stepmother , too , who has also been very patient towards me and kind to me . ) ) We went to Tesco , but first I went to the bank right next door to cash the gift along with some donations I had received from others . At Tesco I purchased a package of 4 thin rolls of tissue ( toilet paper , though we use it mainly as napkins and tissues here in Thailand ) , a bottle of sesame oil , a bottle of sunflower seed oil , oats , peanuts , yakinori seaweed , dates , daifuku , garlic salt , hair conditioner , and dog food . Despite the rain , which had pretty much stopped when we arrived at the market , there was a good selection of produce . The vendor who sold fried and boiled quail eggs was there , and I tried a basket of fried eggs . The vendor who sold my favorite snack was also there . To my disappointment , I didn 't see any sticky rice doughnuts , which I 've really only seen once , and was hoping I would find again if I went early enough ( but either the vendor was not there , or the vendor was there , but the doughnuts were not ) . Maybe it was because of the rain ? Perhaps I aught to buy some sticky rice and make my own Hmong cake ( sticky rice doughnuts are very similar ) . I also found tofu . ^ On the right is baby corn and something else . Could it be tomatoes ? I 'm not sure , and am now questioning whether I got the tomatoes from the same vendor as the baby corn and the potatoes , or if I got the baby corn and tomatoes from a different vendor than the one who sold the potatoes . In the upper right are some small greens . I 'm not sure what it is . It seems to me to be a cross between cabbage and collards . Maybe it is one of the other ( baby collards / baby cabbage with the leaves ) , a hybrid , or something totally different . I think I should ask a friend to name these greens for me . In the middle top is leeks , then there are my Tesco purchases and something else . There are other items , too , that you cannot see . A man enthusiastically offered to sell me some cabbages . I like cabbage and they keep for at least a few weeks ( I usually eat them up so I don 't know how long these will keep for ) , so I bought one kilo , which was two , for 30 baht . The very next vendors on that side ( if I remember correctly ) were a friend 's parents . I was thinking about buying some leeks from them , but they gave me the leeks , along with some Asian cabbages and a bag of tomatoes for free . They might have already decided to before I even noticed they were there , because I think I first noticed when they were already giving away free produce to the person who was leading me through the market ( going ahead of me , anyway ) , who happens to be another friend , and our leader 's wife . I 'm thankful for all the people who have been kind and generous toward me . Thank you . You might not realize just how God has used you , but He has , and your gift has made a difference in more than one way . A little bit can go a long way here . At Tesco , I also topped up on my phone , and on the way back we refilled the water jugs , which are huge . I didn 't keep track as well as I should have on how much I spent . When that happens , I try to guess on the high side , and I 'm also going to round up for this one … This shopping trip cost me less than 900 baht . That actually converts to a little more than $ 25 on google right now . That 's a little over 25 US dollars , and I 'm not planning on eating all this food up in one week , but it seems that it 's better if I don 't set goals on how long the food and other items should last . I 'm expecting that most of these things that will keep well and that I have a lot of , should get me through a few weeks , though . Perhaps I will share later how long some of these things lasted me . I 'm thankful , though . God is good . He has provided , and shown me that I do not have to worry about things like " what will I eat " in the future . I am very blessed to have this abundance here . God is good . He has promised already to provide ( ( See Isaiah 33 : 16 and Matthew 6 . ) ) , and that He has been doing in more ways than I expected already . God is good . The refrigerator went from seeming almost empty ( one reason being that I wanted to eat most of what I had before buying more , and possibly also because I have been eating pretty well ) to being stuffed to the point where I had to carefully arrange to fit everything . God is good . God provided , and even though ( as far as food is concerned ) I think I had enough in the freezer and in dried goods to get me by for another week , I think , I 'm very thankful we went to the market when we did , and that there was so much available despite the rain ( also answers to prayers ) , and that now the fridge is packed , and I had to move ice packs out of the freezer to make more room , too . God is good . I 'm thankful . Today was another cold day , but a little warmer , I think , especially warmer in the kitchen . Today I prepped two of the three different types of greens that I bought ( I 'm not sure about one type , but I know one of the two was purchased at the Monday market . ) . I kept busy for a few hours thoroughly washing , inspecting , picking apart and cutting , boiling , and bagging the greens to put in the freezer , and then washed and boiled some quail eggs . I also washed the dishes and cleaned the counter , too . I usually don 't heat up water for washing dishes , but today I did for two different batches of dishes . Thankfully , the water came out somewhat warm , though not hot , so it was not unbearably cold , though it occasionally came out cold . This morning I also fixed some hot herbal tea from mint purchased at the market the last Monday I went . It 's still good , and there 's still some left . I made enough for everybody , but only one actually took some , so even though I had 3 or four cups , which both warmed my hands and my insides temporarily , there was still a lot of leftovers . I emptied the pot of the mint not long ago and filled it with water to heat up for a hot water bottle , but it would not turn on , so I used the rice cooker , but that 's a blessing also , because it will keep the water warm even if I wait for hours before refilling the bottle , which is a large vinegar ( actually artificial vinegar ) bottle that I had thrown away , but fished out of the trash and washed for this purpose . Right now I have it in a pillowcase under my feet , and I just folded the pillow case over my feet again . It feels good , though my feet might be burnt in some places , as I did not wait for the water bottle to cool , and might have kept it under some spots for too long . Pretty soon , I need to rearrange my laundry , most ( if not all ) of which I think is still wet . I 'm thankful for the rain , because the Lord knows we needed it . It 's been very dry , and I was concerned for the trees ( and also for the drinking water supply ) . The Lord knows how much we need ( ed ) to replenish the water supply and also to hydrate the trees , so if it rains all week , I 'll be OK with that , but I would prefer for it to be dry tomorrow , if we don 't need anymore , so that I can hang this laundry out if it 's still wet , and so that I can do more , as I have a lot that I want to wash this week . ^ The water jugs , a bag of greens , and some other bags that I already showed you . I 'm still not sure what 's in the one . Categories : Journal | Tags : American , baht , buy things , Chiangmai , conversion , convert , cost , dollar , food , groceries , how much , life , living , Mae Malai , Mae Taeng , market , markets , mission , missionary , money , real , realistic , shopping , store , stores , street food , Tesco , Thailand , USD , vegetarian , vendor , vendors | Posted on January 3 , 2016 by Jessie Tuesday I went to the mountain with two of my friends and some of their family members . We camped out overnight and left late in the morning on Wednesday , walked through my friends village and witnessed a little of the Hmong new year festivities , and then headed back for home . Both were beautiful experiences . I took pictures and videos , but the quality of most of them were not good , and so while I am making a video , effects have been added for that and for privacy reasons . After returning from the mountain , I also buried the last fish in the scrap pile , tossing clumps of clay and dirt onto the fish to discourage animals and hoping to reduce the flies . It was tempting on Friday to go see some of the new year festivities here at the village . I could hear the music at least all afternoon and evening , and late into the night . I was woken up around midnight , Friday morning , or late at night on Thursday night to a flash , as it seems the fireworks or other explosions began early Thursday evening . The festivities seemed to continue late into the night on Friday . Despite the noise , I think I went to bed somewhat early . On Sabbath morning I relaxed for a while , spent some time with the Lord , had a good breakfast of leftover wheat stew and hmong cake ( sticky rice pounded and patted into a cake and baked / smoked by the fire ) left over from the camping trip , a gift from my friend , got ready for the day , and eventually headed off to church on the bike . At first , on my way out , the neighbor 's cat ( who I just call " Maeow " , though I might spell it in different ways ) came meowing and rubbing against my ankle . I 'm not sure why Maeow likes to rub against my nice socks on Sabbath morning ( it did so last Sabbath morning on my way out to church , too ) . I put some food out for Maeow and gave the cat a pet . Meaow didn 't eat at first , but might have gone to eat when I went in to change my socks ( as I did not want the cat smell to attract nor to excite the dogs ) . Shortly after , I was on my way . Of course , I prayed for safety before heading out , too . I managed to park closer to the church than last time , though I was still confused and did not find the road leading up to a more appropriate parking space near the church , but one of the sisters who saw that I looked at least a little confused and who spoke enough English greeted me , listened to my concern , and told me I could park by the cafeteria . She showed me , and so I walked the bike over to the cafeteria and left it there . At first I sat alone , until my friends arrived and invited me to sit with them . For the sermon , I sat behind the translator to get at least a little bit more out of the message than last Sabbath . The service was a blessing , and on the way out I met another missionary family that works at the school . These foreigners are not Thai , but not from America either . The lady of the house invited me over to her home . We made plans for me to come over on Sunday ( today ) , but they walked me to their house to show me the way , and invited me in for lunch , which consisted of kanom , dried fruit , and oranges ( tangerines ) . The kanom was like mini cakes or soft cookies with a soya bean filling . I only intended to eat a few , but a few turned into all the kanom that the others didn 't already eat . That was lunch . The lady of the house also gave me a papaya from their tree , which I brought back with me , scrubbed , and am waiting for it to ripen a little longer . She said it should be ripe enough to eat in about two days , so one more day maybe . I stayed until some time after 2 , I think , and returned to the studo , where I spent the rest of the Sabbath reading and SDA made videos , including Walter Veith ( and , I managed to get into the driveway quite well this time ) . For supper , I ate the banana pudding that I had fixed for lunch , with coconut milk added to it , and the rest of the coconut from last Sunday scraped from the shell and mixed in . It was filling , but my tummy didn 't feel very good at the end of the day . This morning I woke up before five thirty , spent some time in prayer and Bible reading , got ready for the day , and headed out to the Sunday market after another prayer for protection . I arrived early , before the couple with the many baskets ( and some boxes ) had arrived to set up , and left before they came , so I do not know if they would have come . It was a small disappointment , considering that I had hoped to buy a lighter and some matches from them . Last night when I went to wash , the power went out in the village , or at least these houses , and I was pretty much in the dark , though not for long . Thankfully , my tablet had some battery power , so I spent the time playing Bible triva . My flashlight wasn 't working well , either , until I changed the batteries . I thought to buy a new flashlight , but decided to hold off , since mine is working , and there may be more here at the studio . Since I did not buy matches , I also held off on buying candles , which was also on my list . I had also hoped to get another child - sized toothbrush , as I dropped the last one into the sink and it broke . I realize that I should probably stop saying that the things I buy will last a long time , as I am finding that they are not lasting as long as I think they will . So far , the toothpaste and shampoo are doing well , but I 've already broken a toothbrush and a few days ago , when fixing oatmeal for breakfast , spilled most of the bag onto the floor . I had been eating unhealthy amounts of coconut oil ( and not eating all that I poured onto the food ) , but plan to cut back and have been doing better these past couple days . The salt is also going fast , and I need to cut down on that . The coconut milk and sesame cereal has lasted well , and so I know that 2 coconut milks should get me through a month , unless I plan to use a lot of it , and the soy milk powder is also holding up well . If the garlic and onion don 't spoil before I use them , then what I bought at the Monday market a couple weeks ago should last me at least a couple more weeks , and if I cut back on the coconut oil , that should last me at least another week or two also . I 'm hopeful . However , I realize that I should probably stop saying how long I think these things will last , because anything can happen . The lady selling the noodles was there at the market , and I purchased a 20 baht ( large ) order of fresh noodles as well as some of those fried yellow bean curd for breakfast . Last Sunday , I had purchased 30 and the man through in a few extra ( I 'm not sure if intentionally or accidentally , though judging by the extra fried ball of tofu in my bag today , I guess accidentally . ) , and I ate the whole bag in one day . Today I purchased 50 , and yesterday on Sabbath made plans to go to someone 's house around lunch time today , so the leftovers should last me at least until tomorrow . I purchased some peanuts and another crunchy treat from a vendor who spoke some English . I guess I speak too softly , because he seemed to have difficulty understanding me because my voice was too low , not so much because of my English . We had a brief conversation , and I told him that I want to learn Thai . I also looked for some vegetables and fruit , and a coconut . There were at least 3 vendors selling what looked like spinach , but I did not buy any . There was no coconuts , that I saw , but I did purchase some oranges ( tangerines ) from the lady who ( I think ) sold the coconuts also . A lady tried to sell me some strange sauce or relish of some sort with some sliced cucumbers or something , or a bag of some other strange food . I regret not buying the cucumbers when she tried to get me to buy them . When I looked later , on my way out , it looked like the prepared bags of cucumber and relish or whatever it was was sold out . Had I waited she might have made more . I did get some tomatoes , herbs , some bananas , and some tofu from the man who sold the yellow bean curd ( not in that order ) , and greeted one of my friends ( who saw and greeted me first ) on the way out . It was an interesting experience . All together , I think I spent about 150 baht or less , which is less than 5 USD . I had thought of putting the groceries under the seat of the bike and going back to the market to shop more , but decided to get back to the studio and eat some breakfast . On the way back , a dog started barking and running or walking after me ( at least that 's what it seemed like was happening ) , but as I went around the corner , the dog stopped following me . I made it safely up the drive way and into the studio , where I put away the groceries ( except for breakfast ) , and ate while watching Thai Good Stories on youtube . Posted on December 29 , 2015 by Jessie Yesterday in the afternoon or early evening , the last fish seemed to be doing well , floating nose up under the water , and eating or sucking in food and water when on the surface , but I came out in the evening again and found it belly - up again . It was still alive , and still swam when disturbed , but came back to the surface belly - up again . Still , it was sucking in food and water . This morning it looked like most , if not all of the food was gone . Whether it was eaten or sunk , I 'm not sure , but the fish is belly up , floating on the water still , not moving its mouth or anything , not even responsive when disturbed . Just in case it 's sleeping or will come back to life , I have prayed for it and gave it more food . In either case , I can praise God for His answer . At least I do not need to worry about the fish anymore . God is good , although it is sad that all fish died . Posted on December 28 , 2015 by Jessie The missionary family here left me some greens , some sort of " lettuce " . I saw them in the fridge today and at first thought that maybe I had some spinach left over , but no , I had eaten it all . When I pulled them out , I recognized them as the lettuce that was left behind . I didn 't want to eat them raw , so I washed them and boiled them in the rice cooker with garlic and toasted three slices of bread in the waffle iron . That made 7 thick slices of bread today . The greens were interesting . With some salt , at first I liked them , but by the time I finished them , I can 't say for sure . I think I 'd eat them again , but spinach is better . Maybe they are better raw . I didn 't feel adventurous enough , though it was quite an adventure eating them . By the time I finished lunch , I had eaten two more slices of bread . Having eaten the entire loaf of bread in one day , and now being down to one loaf from the original 3 ( in less than a week 's time ) , I am thankful that the bakery is closed for a while . I ate too much , and my belly is full . I need to get my act together and cut down on the coconut oil ( which I have already used over half the bottle ) , the salt , and the flour . Tomorrow , perhaps I aught to have oats or rice or sesame for breakfast , and lots of bananas , because I have lots of those . To get a little exercise , I washed the dishes and took out the scraps , and then went outside to move around a little bit . I thought of closing the gate , but decided not to go down by the road dressed as I am . Instead , I decided to check on the fish ( which for some reason in my mind I am calling " Chuckee " ) , which I have been and still am praying for . Surprisingly , the fish was no longer belly - up , but vertical , or almost vertical , nose and mouth up , moving its mouth as though sucking in water and food ( probably both ) . I began to fill the jug and to pour in more water . Each time , the fish reacted . At least once or twice , I could see it swim to the bottom , but for some reason it rolled and floated back to the top . It seems to be longer than the diameter of the bottom , and I wonder if , perhaps , it is uncomfortable down there . The fish seemed to react well to more and more water , so I filled the bin . It continued to swim , and come back up , sucking in more water and food . Without my interference , when it bumped against the side of the bin , it moved again . So the fish is alive , and no longer belly up . Praise God ! I am thanking God that the fish is alive , and seems to be doing better now , and am still praying for the fish . Posted on December 28 , 2015 by Jessie Yesterday morning was Sunday morning , and I found myself struggling a little to get out of bed . Perhaps I ate too much the night before , and had some difficulty getting to sleep , though I did sleep . Not wanting to miss the Sunday market , and not feeling hungry , I got up , had my morning devotion , and got ready for the day . Then I fed the fish and headed out on the motorbike , slowly riding down the hill with the breaks on and the motor off , until I could park the bike outside the fence , closed the fence , and then got the bike started . There were many motorbikes parked at the market , so I took the most convenient spot across the road and walked past many other bikes and into the market . I looked around for the lady who sells noodles , but if she was there , she wasn 't selling noodles ( I looked for the noodles and didn 't see them , as I 'm not sure I can recognize her yet without them . ) , but I did see some coconut and some of those delicious yellow bean curd . They taste like eggs and I have been wondering if maybe they are actually made from or with eggs , but I think I was told they were like tofu , but made from a different bean . I bought 30 this time , and the man threw in a few extra ( whether intentionally or accidentally , I do not know ) and 3 packets of sauce . I also purchased some soft tofu from him . Then I went to look for the other items , some dish soap , steel wool , a sponge , a notebook or paper , and a few other things . I looked for matches and found a lighter , but was not sure if the boxes that were packaged with the lighter were matches or some form of cigarette , so I did not get them . I think I found everything else on my list , and an interesting cloth with pockets that makes a good case for my small Bible and passport , something else I was keeping my eyes open for . I purchased from a few different people , and all my purchases today included : a cute package of toothbrushes with two adult toothbrushes and one child toothbrush . This was a wonderful find , as it gives me a clean , new toothbrush for scrubbing vegetables and fruit and a clean , new toothbrush for scrubbing dishes . I can reserve the old , used toothbrushes for more dirtier cleaning , and the child sized toothbrush is better for my teeth . I had looked for a new one at Walmart and the Dollar Tree before leaving , but settled with an adult toothbrush instead . Now I 'm glad to have the baby / child sized toothbrush . When I say " couple " , I do not really know if they are a married couple or family or just working together , though I assume the first or second , but I mean there were two people there and , in each case that I can remember , a man and a woman . I didn 't buy from every stand , because I didn 't need things that some stands had . On my way out a young man kept saying , " Sa - wat - dii - kab " to me . The sun was bright and I covered my eyes to get a better look at him . He motioned with his head and repeated himself . I think I smiled and said , " Sa - wat - dii - kaa " in response , but continued on my way . I hope I didn 't seem rude . I was not trying to be . I 'm not sure if he was saying hello because he recognized me , was trying to get my attention to get me to buy something from the stand that he was at , or if he was saying goodbye because he saw me on my way out , as Sa - wat - dii can mean both . I think I was a bit slow to recognize and process what he was saying , too . I hope he has forgiven me . I 'm sure God has , as I have asked Him also . I did not mean to be rude in either case . The whole trip cost me 245 baht which coverts to about 6 . 79 USD according to google as I key this journal entry , and many of those supplies should last me at least a few months ( I hope . ) . I am so thankful for how God provided . God is good . I 'm thankful for His protection also , both there and back , and for self control . I had expected the 30 + goodies to last me at least a couple to a few days , but ate them all in that one day , though not all in one meal . They are addicting , and I have been wondering if maybe they are seasoned with MSG , which I need to remind myself is used commonly here as a seasoning ( at least I think it is ) which is from what I understand addicting , or if they are just addicting because they are fried , or because they taste so delicious , or maybe because of the sauce used on them . They are very delicious and even good cold . I was naughty and ate the sauce in the first meal , but in the second seasoned them with coconut oil , turmeric , and salt . They were delicious that way , too . Yum ! This picture is from the first time I ate them . The lady who took me in for a few days bought them at the Sunday market long with noodles and a sweet , gummy snack made from sticky rice and coconut . I saw those at the Sunday market this week , too , but did not get any . I gave myself a little bit more room to open up the fence , but found myself parking under the tree on the right - hand side . I thought to park there and push the bike out was better than to risk crashing or dropping the bike trying to go out backwards , and going in was better than sideswiping the branches and getting scratched up or crashing . Check my Is118J316 Thailand playlist for the video that will be coming later . I did manage to get the bike out from under the tree and properly parked . I had some of the treats for breakfast ( or brunch ) and watched some videos on youtube . Also during the day , I did a large load of laundry , watched more youtube videos , uploaded a video onto youtube , put together some videos that need further editing before uploading , found myself getting bored , and saying to myself ( or thinking , at least ) , that I shouldn 't be getting bored in Thailand , so I went outside to do some cleaning , and found a small bottom feeder floating belly - up in the water . I 'm not sure if it was really dead or not , but I looked closely and it didn 't seem to be moving , so I scooped it out with one of the coconut shells that was lying around ( I did put on some plastic gloves first ) , and then dumped it along with the other dead fish into the food scrap pile . These things are not listed in the correct order for how they happened , and at least some things , such as the videos , may have been done throughout at different portions of the day . I also knocked a spider web down . For supper I finished off the bean curd ( or egg , whatever it is ) along with some apples and a still - not - ripe avocado , and the crumbs from the crackers that a lady made for me to take on the trip . They sustained me ( along with a few other goodies ) on the trip and also my first few days here at the studio ( I had frozen them ) . I wish that I had known I could so easily walk through customs without them checking my bag , for I had dried fruit , seeds , nuts , and another bag of crackers that I threw away , in case they would not be approved of by customs , but I realize that if I had had more faith , or waited to see what customs would do ( I wanted to avoid trouble , but the worst they might have done was probably have me throw them away or hand them over for confiscation ) , then I probably could still be enjoying some of those things now . To those who gave me this food , I 'm sorry . Please forgive me for being wasteful . I wish I had known , or trusted more , or not let worry get the best of me . I had a good night 's rest , though I went to bed some time after 10 , I think , and slept in this morning . When I went out to feed the fish , I found the big bottom feeder belly up , but I prayed over it and told it in Jesus ' name to live ( more than once ) , and moved the bucket , and also touched it ( later , after coming in and praying more ) , and most of the times it responded by rolling over , diving back down into the bucket , and returning to the surface belly up . I hope that it was just sunning itself , or if it was hungry that it is eating now . I do not know what was wrong with these fish , but I washed my hands very well . I 'm about to take the scraps out from breakfast ( I had started to prepare potatoes , but had tofu sandwiches and the coconut water instead , and will check on the fish again . The fish was still alive , but still floating on its back , and it seems less often responsive this time . I poured more water into the bin , and it seemed to respond , so I took it out and put it in another bucket and changed the water and gave it more food , but the response seems very minimal . I have resigned myself to the Lord 's will . If the fish dies , it dies . It will be sad that all the fish in my care died , and I wonder why it had to happen while the others were away and while I was taking care of them . I still hope and pray that the fish will live , if it is God 's will . To those who left them in my care , I 'm sorry that I did not take better care of them , and I am sorry that I do not know what to do for them . I 'm sorry that they died . Please forgive me . Posted on December 28 , 2015 by Jessie Sabbath morning ( December 26th ) here in Thailand was the evening of Christmas ( December 25th , not to be confused with Christmas eve ) in my home state in the US . A few of my family members were gathered at my grandmother 's house on my dad 's side of the family , and I got up early and had a short devotional time in prayer and reading , having already arranged to chat with them through video ( or voice ) call on facebook . Not seeing any of them on facebook , I got out my new phone and tried to text my dad , and found myself having difficulty . The text message had no spaces or punctuation , and did not send . I tried to call , but the call would not go through . Then I got out the instruction booklet , dialed the necessary code , and finally managed to get through to my dad . He got onto facebook , where we tried the voice call ( if not the video call also ) , but , as was the difficulty the first time I called him a couple days or so before , he could not hear me . I think I could not hear him , either . Finally , I decided just to call them on the phone , and keep it short . He put me on speaker phone most of the time . The phone was passed to my sister and then to my grandma , and maybe to my stepmother somewhere in between - I 'm not sure . I talked with them for about twenty minutes to half an hour , wished them all a merry Christmas , and told them I loved them . After hanging up , sent them a follow up message , and went about eating some breakfast - warmed up leftover soup and waffle , and watching The Book of Acts . I think I watched some of it in the morning , anyway . Then I prepared myself for church . At about 9 AM , I went outside to get the motorbike started . I turned the key and turned it , trying hard to get the engine to start , until my fingers were sore from the pressure . Thinking that maybe I was not strong enough , I came inside to get some pliers or some similar tool , and tried with that to turn the key , but to no avail , though I did succeed in bending the key a little . I had even tried pressing the start button . I nearly gave up , but decided to call the missionary who had loaned me the bike , to ask him if there was something I needed to do to start the bike before turning the key . If he had told me , I had forgotten ! He confirmed that there was , that I needed to hold down the break on the left side and press the start button . After trying that , I got the bike to start , though the engine stopped after it had idled too long while I was putting on the helmet that was also borrowed and probably adjusting my bag , too . It was OK . I had been warned that would happen . Wanting to start on flat ground and not to crash on the way out , I started to push the bike down the driveway toward the road . The hill was not very steep , but the bike was heavy , and wanted to go down without me . I found myself having difficulty holding onto and controlling it , and dropped it on its side . I don 't remember if I opened the fence before I got down the hill , or if it was when I was trying to lean the bike on its kickstand to open the fence that it fell over , though vaguely I seem to remember the latter , but am not sure . I do know that there were dogs outside the fence , and I was trying to wait for at least one of them to go away . I didn 't mind two of the others so much , though I didn 't want them to bother me . I had packed some treats , just in case , but didn 't need to use any . While the bike was still on the hill , I picked it up and tried to get the engine started again to make sure it worked . Unlike the first time , it made noise , but wouldn 't continue to run , so I made the foolish decision of trying to give it a little gas . Though the kickstand was down , it didn 't stop the bike from ripping free of my grasp ( I think I let go for fear of being dragged along with it . ) and taking off toward the road , where it stopped short and fell over . I probably left quite an impression on the dogs that were watching me and been quite a sight to the neighbors . I picked up the bike , praying that it would still work , set it on its kickstand in the middle of the road ( or very close to the middle , if not exact ) , put on the helmet and closed the fence , then got on the bike ( I might have had to turn it around , but I 'm not sure ) , kicked up the kickstand , and finally got set out toward the church . I looked for the hill to turn onto , but didn 't find it . However , when coming toward a bridge , I felt a sense of familiarity and recognition from my first Sabbath here and headed onto another side road , which did lead to the academy campus . I passed an elderly lady who seemed to be motioning in the other direction . She looked familiar , like one of the church members ( or attendees ) or someone who had been to the wedding . I kept going down the road a little ways and then turned around . Not sure where to turn , I passed the lady again and turned up a road , until I found a familiar building from my first visit to the campus , and parked there , and then made my way , walking , to the church . I 'm thankful for God 's protection that day . I had arrived earlier than I expected , and sat through most ( if not all ) of the Sabbath school lesson , not understanding but a few words that I may have picked up . I became thirsty , and felt anxious to leave for that and other reasons , too , but I prayed that if God wanted me to stay for whole whole service , that someone would offer me water . God answered as I was on my way out , there was some water that some were refilling and a lady asked if I wanted a cup as I walked toward them . She gave me a cup and I poured some water into it . As I was drinking , though , I noticed something in the water , and then realized there were actually many . Was it ants ? I 'm still not sure what was in the cup , though it looked like the cup should have been clean . I drank a little bit more , dumped out the tiny bit that remained , picked the strange things out of the cup , and put the cup into my bag for later . I had purchased the SD card to go with a cheap video camera that I had purchased , but I dropped the camera once or twice and the color and video quality was bad after that , though it worked well for recording shortly before the quality turned really bad . I had brought the SD card with me , and had been praying for an opportunity to sell it or to do something with it . Another missionary was talking with our leader here about the price of an SD card here , and I told him I had one to sell . It was new , only used a few times / for a short time . I had thought it was about 8 dollars and was going to sell it for the equivalent of about 3 USD in thai baht , but told him to give me what he thought was right . He wanted me to set a price , and I wasn 't sure , so even after telling him this , I looked it up to see what it would cost at Walmart and it cost less than I thought ( even if I had paid that much , but don 't remember ) , so I sold it to him for 50 baht which is about $ 1 . 40 . I wasn 't sure if I needed to tithe , since this sale could have been considered as me getting back some of what I spent , on which I had already tithed , but decided to tithe anyway , just in case . I know that the Lord will bless . The special music was in English . Two children sang , " Jesus loves me . " I didn 't understand most of the sermon , though picked up a little of what the woman translating was saying . I should have moved in closer . Later , though , after the closing hymn and prayer , when we were leaving , I picked up from another conversation that the sermon was about Jonah . I spoke briefly again with the old acquaintances and was directed back towards the bike . On the way back , walking alone , I heard the click click click of claws on the sidewalk and turned around to see a dog following me . Meeting my gaze , the dog stopped in its tracks . It didn 't look unfriendly , but just in case I started to open and reach into my bag to give it a treat , but it turned and walked away before I could get the treat out , so I let it be and continued toward the bike . The exercise both ways was good for me , and I considered going back to the campus later to get some exercise , but have not gone yet . I stopped too close to the fence outside the studio . I opened the fence and think I backed up a little bit , but not enough . The turn was too narrow , and I stuck my feet out to keep from crashing into the tree branches that had come down , but brought the bike safely up the hill . I spent the rest of the Sabbath watching The Book of Acts , reading , spending a little time outside , and resting with the Lord . I am very thankful for God 's protection from the dogs and from my driving , and for protection on the road , and for getting me to church and back safely , for familiar faces and special music in English , that church was open , for the water ( and the bathroom that I found on the way out , though I did not read the signs first and used the boys ' side ) and for all that He taught me , for a few things came to mind when watching The Book of Acts , and maybe a few other times , too , and for the conversation with my family . Sabbath was mostly peaceful , and yet refreshing . I am so thankful for Sabbath . I love these little tracts . If someone offers you one , please take it ! They probably love them , too , and maybe you will if you read them . This one 's about health . Looks like they haven 't posted any new stories this year , but I 'm sure they 're still publishing the magazines . I know these stories are for children , but I still like to read them . 0 Some of my favorite stories are in this book , which can now be found in the public domain . I love most of these stories , especially " The Indian 's Revenge " and " Benevolent Society " , which may be my two favorites here . 0 |
Posted by docp226 on November 4 , 2013 I heard a song earlier today , The House that Built Me , and it desperately made me want to visit my childhood home . I thought that the least I could do was ask so I wrote this letter to the current resident of the home I grew up in . I also had this idea that it would be so cool to hear about other people 's experiences that did the same thing . I was fortunate that my childhood home was full of love and attention . Sometimes the attention came in the form of discipline I thought I could have lived without but it was good for me and shaped me into who I am today . If you haven 't visited your childhood home and this entry leads you to ask to do it , please , let me know how it went . i 'll keep you updated if I hear a response . Here is the letter I wrote to the people living in the House that Built Me . This may be the most bizarre letter you have ever received at your home . My name is David Barrera . I was born and raised in Andrews , TX . In fact , I was brought home from the hospital to your home and lived there until I left home after my graduation from high school . Like most 17 - year - old kids from Andrews , TX , I couldn 't wait to spread my wings and fly and get away from that small town . I literally left Andrews , TX the morning after my high school graduation and moved to Corpus Christi . That was in 1988 . I drove away and saw my parents standing in the front yard near the three trees that they had planted for each one of us ; my mother in tears and my father with a somber look on his face . I didn 't realize how difficult this was for them until I became a parent . I have three children now . My parents sold the house in 1991 and moved to Corpus Christi . Shortly after my parents moved to Corpus Christi , I moved to Houston . I remember when my parents got to Corpus Christi , my mother was very depressed . She cried for several days because she missed the home that she had raised me and my two older siblings in . I know the house has changed but I remember my brother and I helping my dad as he built on to the back of the house . As a child , my brother and shared the bedroom at the end and to the left of the hallway . My parents bedroom was right across the hallway , the one with the bathroom in it . My sister 's bedroom was right across from the hallway bathroom , close to the living room . The layout of the house may be very different now , I don 't know . As we got older , my father built a playroom at the back of the house . He had a small study attached to the playroom and there was a small bedroom at the very back of the house with a door that led to the back yard . That little room with the bathroom in it became my brothers room and later , that playroom became my parents master bedroom and my brothers little room became their walk in closet / bathroom . I could go on and on describing the house the way it was back then . I did not go back to Andrews until July 2010 . I still have some friends there that I connected with on Facebook and I went to see them and to see the little town that I had left behind back in 1988 . I walked through the neighborhood , stopped and visited Mrs . Clark , next door to your house , and Billie Jones , catty - corner from your house . While I was at Billie Jones ' house , I told her that I would have loved to see the house but I didn 't have the nerve to ask to walk through . I thought it would have been inappropriate . I 'm a therapist in Corpus Christi now . After I left Houston , I moved back to Corpus Christi with my wife and children . Today , I was driving back to Corpus Christi from visiting two families in Laredo . I do assessments of people 's homes that are adopting children . As I was driving a song came on the radio called " The House that Built Me . " I got emotional when I heard this song and I remembered standing in front of your house , taking a picture , and remembering playing in the front yard . I so wanted to knock on the door and ask to see the house but I kept walking . Here is the picture I took . I was sad to see that the big mulberry tree in the back was gone but I was happy to see that the house was kept up . It looks like a really nice house and I 'm thinking that if the walls could talk , they 'd say that a happy family was raised in this house and that there are many happy memories stored in those walls . The hallway in your house has heard hours upon hours of children 's laughter when me and my siblings would pile pillows on top of each other and take a running leap to plunge down on each other . For some weird reason , we called this game , " Mr . Bambino " . That hallway also was our entry way to the dining room whenever we came out with our hair messed up or pillows stuffed up our shirts as we surprised our parents and their friends / relatives at the dinner table with whatever comedic acts we had planned . The living room is full of memories of Christmas gifts being opened with surprised faces seeing toys or disappointed faces seeing shirts and socks . We spent tons of time in the playroom , challenging friends to ping pong and my father used to have his orchestra concerts in the back yard . He was the orchestra teacher for all the schools . My mother spent much of her time in her sewing room that was just behind the den and I remember peaking in on my dad having his bible studies in his office by the playroom . We were a dog family and my dad had two weimeraners when we were growing up . Maggie and Fonzie . We later got two muts ; Sylvester and Stallone . Those dogs would get out and we 'd be walking up and down the street , yelling , " SYLVESTER ! ! ! STALLONEY ! ! ! " . I 'm sure people thought we were crazy at first . We spent a lot of time on your front porch , waiting for the rain to stop so we could continue playing . My sister played jacks on your front porch and I played with hotwheels there and dug up doodle - bugs under the shrubs just to the left of the front door . It was a wonderful place to grow up . It was a good neighborhood and it looks like it still is . We were constantly outside with all of the neighborhood kids and we played in the neighbors yards as much as played in our own . I have my 25th reunion coming up in xxxx . I would like to ask you a favor . I apologize because I know it may be overstepping some boundaries but I have to ask . It would be So greatly appreciated if I can come and see the house that I grew up in . I 'm 43 years old now . I have been shaped by my childhood experiences in your house . I now know what my mother went through back in 1991 . My family has so many good memories in your house . A marriage got stronger and three children learned life 's important lessons from parents that loved them in your house . My father is 80 now . My mother is 76 . They are still going strong . I completely understand if you don 't feel comfortable allowing a total stranger into your house . My wife and I will be coming to Andrews in xxxx and it would mean a great deal to me if I could spend 5 or 10 minutes walking through your home . It was the House that Built Me … . and my brother and sister . Please feel free to ignore this letter if you don 't feel comfortable with this request . If you do feel comfortable , I will be coming into town on xx / xx and will be leaving on xx / xx . My phone number is 361 - xxx - xxxx . My email is xxxxxxx @ hotmail . com . If you feel comfortable allowing me and my wife into your home for a brief time , it would mean the world to me . Thanks and God Bless . Posted by docp226 on April 5 , 2012 I have a great father . He has always been a great provider . He has always been available to me . He 'll be 80 years old and he 's still available to me any time I need him . He 's one of the hardest working people and easily the most talented person I 've ever known . He 's a great artist and a great musician . When I was growing up , he was a preacher at a Spanish Baptist Church and an orchestra teacher . He travelled a lot and was back and forth from my hometown of Andrews to Big Springs , San Angelo , Midland , Odessa , and Lubbock , playing in symphonies , weddings , and every other type of gathering . In the Summers , I remember him playing with us in the pool on our 3 day family vacations to the Holidome in San Angelo . Those were the favorite times of my life . Now , having said all that . I must say that I am guilty , just like most every other kid in the world at not recognizing my mother like I should . Mother ; the job that is the most under - appreciated job in the world . Dad 's are typically " the fun one " while moms are always the bad guys . Thinking about my childhood , Mom is the glue that held it all together . When my dad was bringing home the paychecks , she made meals fit for a king on the budget of a pauper . We always had the things we needed because Mom pinched pennies and made a dollar stretch farther than humanly possible . I remember going to the Green Stamp store and getting to choose something out of the little catalog after staying up late on the weekends , helping her put stamps in the books with a little wet sponge . Mom was a dentist in Mexico but when coming to the United States , she sacrificed her education and career to stay home with my older brother and later stayed home with us until we went to kindergarten . She turned down a trip to Baylor to become a full fledged dentist in the U . S . so that she could shape and mold healthy and happy children . She would buy Izod , Fila , and Ellesse socks and take off the little alligator , the " F " , and the Ellesse symbols and sew them to our shorts and shirts so that we could look like a million bucks on the tennis court . She would save money so that we could have extra tennis rackets and the best tennis shoes because the shoes are always the most important . I remember standing in the lay - away lines at the stores in Odessa and Mom would put $ 10 dollars on one item and $ 20 on another , and we had everything our peers ever had and more . Mom made sure we knew how to keep our rooms clean and how to clean house . I know how to clean toilets , baseboards , and ceiling fans and when I walk into a house , I recognize that most people 's standards would never meet up to my mother 's standards . She started a cleaning business and employed a dozen or more ladies and at the same time had plenty of work for me and my brother to make us some money for ourselves . She did all this while making sure the house was in order and everything was always taken care of . For this reason , I never lived in a pig sty and people have always felt comfortable and enjoyed being in my home . Mom taught me how to iron my clothes . For this reason , I had neatly pressed uniforms when I was a police officer and everyday I come to work , my dress shirts are nice and pressed and I save a ton of money on dry cleaning and laundering . Mom made sure I got my homework done . She took me to the Andrews County Library and had me enter reading contests and I won my first bicycle because I read more books than all my peers . She would take me to Whackers ( like a Woolworth ) when my grades came in and she bought me a hotwheel for every good grade I brought home . For this reason , I have a PhD at the back of my name every time I sign my signature . Mom forced me to eat foods I didn 't want to eat . For this reason , I 've developed a taste for good and healthy food . Mom taught me how to use the crock pot . For this reason , I can throw an awesome meal together for my kids before walking out the door when their mother is not home . She would tell me things like , " If you 're around fire , you 'll smell like smoke , " " This too shall pass , " " God put me on earth to be your mother , not your friend , and when I say no , it means no , " and " I 'm saying it because I need to say it , not because you need to hear it . " I find myself repeating these things to my kids like a mantra . She cried when I drove away from home the day after high school and when I went through the fire as a police officer , she told me that she prayed every day that God would lead me out of the darkness into a better place . I have a niece that is an only child and my children see her the same as a sibling and I am so glad that she is in the same city . She laughs and plays with my kids and frustrates my kids just like she is a sibling . I have two other nieces that live about 8 hours away and I think it would be awesome if they were here too but when they come into town , they fall right into the fray . I have an older brother and an older sister . My brother is 5 year older than me and my sister is 2 years older . Growing up , my brother and I shared a bedroom for a while and after he moved into the addition , I had a tough time adjusting to him being gone , even though he was only on the other side of the house . One of the most poignant memories I have about my brother is all the cool stuff he kept on his shelves in his bedroom . He had a boom box that my parents had gotten him and he always had a little bowl full of coins . I 'd sneak out . 50 cents every now and then so I 'd have some money for ice cream or candy or baseball cards and when he 'd realize that I 'd been in there , he 'd scream and hollar how he didn 't want me in his bedroom . One of the funniest things I remember about my brother is when we would all get spankings for whatever group crime we committed . My mom or dad would spank us and send us to the back bedroom . For some weird reason , Martha and I were always first when it came to spankings and Robert was last . Me and Martha would be crying and tending to our emotional wounds in the back bedroom and Robert would come in with this crooked little smile on his face and make some comment about how his spanking didn 't hurt . Before we knew it , we were all laughing . We all had friends coming to the house on a regular basis but when Robert 's friends would come over , there 's nothing I wanted more than to be a part of whatever it was they were doing . Of course , I was sent away most of the time but it never discouraged me from trying to weasel my way into the group . He had two good friends , Jeff and Troy , that would use me as a punching bag and would ask me if I wanted to " swap hits . " You know this game . It 's where you punch each other in the arm until one of you gives up . They would always let me go first and I would muster every bit of energy I had and would lay into them as hard as I could with little to no effect . Now it was their turn . Inevitably , I would end up either on the floor or five steps back , wondering why I had agreed to play . I saw Troy about a year ago and I should have asked him if he wanted to swap hits . When we took Robert to San Angelo to see the college and to look at the dorms , I thought he was so cool to be going off on his own . Although I 'm about to be 42 years old , my sister still refers to me as " my baby brother . " Martha and I spent countless hours entertaining one another . Robert was above whatever we were doing most of the time . We played in the water sprinkler . We made potion out of our mother 's powders , creams , and make - ups . We played outside in the snow together . We built forts made up of blankets and dining room chairs in the living room . We rode our bikes to Aunt Rose 's house and would listen to records . When we were smaller , we would lay out a blanket on the living room floor and take our Sunday afternoon nap . My dad had a record player and we had to settle to listening to The Imperials and a series of other Christian groups until Martha was old enough to start getting her own records ; Donna Summer was one of her favorites . I remember the cover with Donna Summer sitting on top of a juke box . One enjoyment we had was putting on our socks and holding pinkies while we rubbed our feet back and forth on the carpet and then one of us would touch my dad 's Realistic stereo system . Sometimes , Robert couldn 't resist and he would join in on the fun . Our neighborhood was full of kids but all it took was one of us to have a good idea and we were off and running . Martha had her own room and it was just up the short hallway from my room . You could see into the dining room and the kitchen from her bedroom door . One time , Martha thought she saw an angel in our kitchen at home . She says she knew it wasn 't a ghost because she wasn 't afraid . The best thing about Martha was hearing her relay whatever story she had . Sometimes , it was just the local middle school or high school drama but sometimes we got the special treat of having Martha re - tell the story of some movie that she got to go see . For some reason , Martha got invited to go to the movies in Odessa or Midland all the time . She would come home and would give me and my mother step by step details of everything that happened in the movie and we would sit there listening as if we were in the theatre . She should have been an actress with all the drama she put forth in re - telling these stories . One of the funniest stories Martha tends to tell is when she broke her arm in gymnastics . She came home from the hospital with a cast on and her eyes were still bloodshot from all the crying she had done . She went into the den and laid down on a big giant pillow that we used to watch tv with and I went and laid down next to her . My aunt Rose had gotten her a candy bar and in all sincerity , I looked over at her and said , " If you don 't feel like eating that candy bar , I 'll eat it for you . " Needless to say , she looked at me in disgust and I made a quick exit . Martha , her husband Bill , and Emma live about a mile and a half from my house and we get to see each other all the time . Like I said , Robert lives 8 hours away with his wife Tressa and their two girls , Hannah and Sophie . I get to see Robert a couple times a year . I know I could sit down and think of a couple dozen more good stories . As I watch my children grow up and hear them fighting together and laughing together I know that they will be telling their own stories about the time Sarah and Isaiah did this and Allie did that . I look forward to hearing them remember their stories when they are grown and on their own . Posted by docp226 on February 5 , 2012 For as along as I can remember , I 've always wanted a metal detector . As a child , I remember going to a good friend 's home and I would always see his metal detector sitting in his closet and I would say , " Hey , let 's take that out and find some stuff ! " His response was always , " Nah , that 's boring and I 've never found anything good with it , " and we 'd go on to riding our bikes or skateboards or just wasting time . Just as any kid would do , Christmas time would come around and I would get distracted and I would forget to ask for a metal detector and about the middle of January , I would kick myself for not focusing my energy on leaving hints for my parents , letting them know that I desparately wanted one . I 'm a grown man ; physically anyway , and the vicious cycle has repeated itself … . until now ! Paycheck after paycheck after paycheck , I would find myself buying things I wanted , all the while , this seed of desire , was forgotten but still growing in the back of my mind . After getting married and having children , I would spend my hard earned check , providing for my wife and children , making sure all of their needs and most of their wants were taken care of . Don 't get me wrong , I still meet the needs of my family , BUT , my time has come ! I have jumped off the ledge into the Amazon . Actually , I ordered my new metal detector on Amazon . com . Shortly after making my order , I told my Uncle Bob about my newly rediscovered interest and the first words from his mouth were , " I ' VE ALWAYS WANTED A METAL DETECTOR ! " It was then that I knew that my Uncle Bob would be my partner in treasure hunting and my initial plan was to order his metal detector as well . Luckily , while in conversation with my Aunt Yolanda ( who was visiting from Alaska ) she said , " let me buy Bob 's metal detector . I didn 't get him anything for his last birthday . " Although our metal detectors were ordered several days apart , they arrived on the same day . I opened mine at my father 's home and it was like Christmas morning . I couldn 't wait to pop in the 9 - volt batteries and take it for a test drive in my father 's back yard . As I was skipping toward my father 's back yard with my new toy , I realized that my father would not appreciate me making his back yard look like a gopher had run rampant through it and I decided to wait until I got back to my own home . I wrapped the box containing Uncle Bob 's metal detector ( in Christmas paper because it was all that I had ) and I proceeded to take it to him at my sister 's home ( where we were all planning on having a garage sale ) . I 'm in my 40 's . Bob is in his 50 's . It 's a funny thing to hear two men , as they are cutting open boxes and peering into the first folded back piece of cardboard , say " AWESOME ! " As Bob made that comment , my response , " That 's what I said when I opened mine ! " Within a few days , our first trip was planned . It was going to be a short trip just to the other side of the bridge , to North Beach . I walked down the beach in one direction while Bob went in the other direction . We did this because , unlike me , Bob read the manual and it said not to use two detectors in close proximity to one another . As I walked closer to the water 's edge , Bob stayed about 20 yards from the water , well into the loose sand . My detector wasn 't making a sound but every couple minutes , in the distance , I would hear Bob 's detector , " Beep … Beep … Beep … Beep . " I would look back at Bob and he would be kneeling down , digging up his new discoveries . In my frustration , I knew it was time to change my game plan . I walked away from the surf , methodically swinging my detector head back and forth , always parallel to the ground , about 2 inches away from the sand . I was 15 yards from the surf , when it happened . " BEEP … BEEP … BEEP … BEEP ! " It was like music to my ears . Whatever it was , it was not only in one spot . It was covering a square area about 2 feet wide . I got down on my knees and started gently scraping away the sand ( so as not to damage my new found treasure ) . Nothing . I ran the detector over the sp0t again . " BEEP … BEEP … BEEP … BEEP ! " Two inches down . Nothing . " BEEP … BEEP … BEEP ! " Four inches down . Six inches down . Nothing . " BEEP … BEEP … BEEP ! " I kept digging . Eight inches down . Nothing . A foot down . The hole was becoming larger and my digging became more and more frantic . I noticed that Bob was moving in my direction to see what I had discovered . I kept digging . The pile of sand was growing ever higher . " BEEP … BEEP … BEEP ! " Still there . Fourteen inches down . Nothing . I was digging frantically , picturing in my mind , a chest of some sort ; full of coins or some other riches . Who knows how long ago settlers or pirates had come to this beach , burying their valuables , later losing their maps and now … their treasure was mine ! The space was about the size of a chest , I thought . It was a perfectly reasonable thought … at the time . As my mind continued in this fantasy , I hit what I was desparately unearthing . A collection of beer cans and bottles , some group of idiots obviously burying them there to taunt me ! Knowing that a treasure hunter , just like myself , would be coming along to clean up their mess ! Regardless , the haul was not that great . It seems treasure hunting is not my forte , but either way , next weekend … . the hunt continues . Posted by docp226 on January 16 , 2012 Sarah was born on January 14 in Houston , TX . When she was 3 months old the family moved to Corpus Christi but I stayed in Houston for a while longer to tie up some loose ends . Her first words came one weekend when I met her , her mother and older sister at the IKEA on I - 10 . I was inside the store and waiting by the registers and when they walked in , she was the first of the three to see me . She yelled out her first word , " Da - Da . " My heart melted . All three of my children have special qualities and they are all wonderful in their own little ways . I wanted to share about Sarah 's qualities . If you read my last post , you know my Aunt Rose passed away on January 14 . This was Sarah 's birthday and understandably , we were distracted from the focus we typically would have had on her because of the loss . Either way , we were able to treat her and her friend to dinner the night before . Sarah 's in the process of working on several art projects that she is going to enter in an art show in February . The other day , my 16 year old daughter picked me up from work . I don 't know what we were talking about that brought up Sarah but we both began commenting on how Sarah is such a free spirit and a true Bohemian . Allie said that there are kids that try to be " hip " but Sarah is just " hip " because that 's who she is . Sarah is definitely an artist but she 's also an athlete . She is a killer on the tennis court . Her mind works unlike any I 've ever seen . She gets distracted by the next best idea and all of her ideas are good . She 's smart . She 's aggressive because she 's a winner and she craves winning . She says she wants to be a cook and an artist . She says she wants to travel the world and I know she will . She 's fearless and when she sets a goal for herself , she goes after it and there 's nothing that can stop her . Her mother describes her as her rainbow because she is all colors . When she gets upset or sad , everyone knows it . When she is happy , she lights up the world around her in every direction . Sarah 's creative mind is always at work . The best thing about her is that she has a heart of gold . She doesn 't always show that heart to her brother and sister but it 's there . Yesterday , she told me that she and her best friend were going to start a project to raise money for a restaurant that feeds the homeless . It 's a giant project but I know she will set her goal and it will become a reality . That heart of gold is the same reason that she loves every animal she sees . She volunteered to take care of the dogs and cats that were being adopted and she treats her own dog ( Lulu ) like a princess . When her Lulu 's sister got sick and passed , Sarah 's heart broke and since that time , Lulu has slept in her bed and has been comforted and is the happiest dog I 've ever seen . Sarah is strong but sensitive . She is all over the place and focused at the same time . Her passion for art and the other things she loves ensures that she is going to be successful . I always told her that I don 't care if she 's rich when she gets older but that she spends her life doing what she loves and I know this will be her reality . She is a natural beauty with piercing dark eyes and a heart of gold . She 's my angel . Whenever I look at her , I see the little girl that lights up everything around her . Dad loves you Sarah . Posted by docp226 on January 14 , 2012 My Aunt Rose passed away today . It was a long day for everyone in the family . The phone rang shortly after midnight and it was my sister letting us know that Aunt Rose was taken to the hospital . I was going to stay in bed but I decided to get up and get dressed , thinking that I should go just in case , but really feeling that it was going to turn out to be nothing serious . As I walked up to the emergency room entrance , and saw the look on my sister 's face , I knew it was more serious than I initially thought . Within an hour , the doctor came in and told us that she was gone . I grew up around my Aunt Rose . She was like a third parent more than an Aunt when we were kids . She rarely got onto us but if she needed to , nothing stopped her and we listened to her and she loved us and we loved her . I 'm sure all the family members have things they remember about my aunt but there are some very distinct things I remember about her . She collected owls and in her small home in West Texas , there were owls of every sort . As a kid , it was easy to get her Christmas and birthday gifts because I knew all I had to do was look for something with an owl . My aunt always had a gift with painting and being artistic . She was always working on some sort of project and i 'm sure that most all of us have something she made displayed somewhere in our homes . James Taylor was one of her favorite music artists . I made a James Taylor CD for her several years ago and as a child , I remember sitting on her living room floor listening to her records . She called me Dave . She called my brother Rob , and I laugh a little now that I 'm thinking about it because she called my sister Mouthy ( Her name 's Martha ) . We used to ride our bikes to her house when we were bored and there was always something to do there . In reality , there wasn 't really much to do there , except visit Aunt Rose and hang around while she worked on whatever she was working on and she would allow us to take part in whatever she was doing . This morning after about 4 and a half hours of sleep , I went to my dad 's and met up with my sister . Aunt Rose had just gotten settled into a small apartment behind my dad 's house after spending the last couple years taking care of her older sister who has Alzheimers . My aunt 's art and craft supplies were organized neatly throughout the apartment . My aunt had not been there very long but the first thing my sister said ( with tears in her eyes ) , and just before I was able to say it , was " It smells like Aunt Rose in here . " It smelled just like her home in Andrews . It 's hard to describe . Maybe it was the art supplies , the quilts , the books , the perfume , the make - up , but most likely , just a combination of all the things that made up my Aunt Rose . I 'll miss my Aunt Rose but I 'm sure it won 't be anything compared to how her brothers and sisters miss her . The hardest part when losing an aunt or uncle is having to see the sadness that everyone else is having to deal with after losing a sibling . When my sister and I were in my aunt 's apartment I noticed a small picture of my grandmother and my Aunt Cuca . My grandmother passed away in 1991 and my Aunt Rose took care of my Aunt Cuca for the last couple years . My grandmother and aunt would go to San Benito to my Aunt Sylvia 's home in the valley to have huge garage sales . It 's what they loved to do in the same way that my Aunt Rose loved her arts and crafts . I made a quick trip to Walgreens to make copies of that photo for the Aunts and Uncles that didn 't have one . I thought of my grandmother as we sat in the Emergency Room waiting on the medical examiner , all I could think about was what a good time my Aunt Rose was having updating my grandmother on all the things she missed out on in the last 20 years and how my grandmother is enjoying her Beautiful Rose . Posted by docp226 on December 8 , 2011 My 16 year old daughter picked me up at work last night . We 're a family with three drivers ( now that Allie has her license ) and only two vehicles . I know we 'll be buying her a new car next year before she goes off to college but for the time being , to save several hundred dollars a month , getting dropped off and picked up from work is an inconvenience I can live with . She picked me up and on the short 7 minute drive home , she vented all the way home , complaining about her brother doing this and that and mother being this way and that way and she ended her rant by saying , " This is why I want to move 9 hours away . " It made me a little sad to hear her say these words but I remember like it was yesterday feeling this exact same way . I didn 't have a younger brother . My brother and sister were older and I was the baby of the family but for a number of reasons , I couldn 't wait to leave the nest . Honestly , I don 't remember what they were other than wanting to get out of a small town and just to be on my own and to be responsible for myself . Several years passed and I found myself living alone in Houston , still a kid in my early 20 's , in the police academy , living in an efficiency apartment with very very few furnishings , and although I had plenty of friends to hang out with , I found myself feeling very lonely and missing my brother , my sister , and my parents . I was on my own and rather than wanting to be on my own , I wanted family around me . My brother Robert came to visit me and he had been there two days and he had to go back to Corpus Christi . It was a Friday and we were sitting at the pool and I told him , " Why don 't you stay the weekend ? " I didn 't have to be at the academy and it was two more days for us to hang out together . He made a phone call and it turned out he had to get back . He left and I remember like it was yesterday . I went back into my tiny apartment and I was overwhelmed with sadness . I had missed my brother , my whole family for that matter and I would have done anything to hang out with him for just two more days . It was crazy that I was feeling that way . No one had died . No one had moved to the other side of the world or to another continent . Looking back , I know that was a transition point in my life . After spending that day in my apartment , lonely and missing family , I went back with my normal schedule of friends , dates , etc . I have never felt that way since . When I left home after high school , I came to a town where there was a sister , grandmother , aunts , uncles , and cousins . I had family close to fill the void of missing parents and being that my brother had been off at college , I was used to him not being around . Now , I was an adult and finally on my own . I 'm in my 40 's now and my oldest child can 't wait to get out from under my roof . She can 't wait to leave home , get away from her siblings , and to be independent . She 's going to go through what I went through and she 's going to go through it much earlier in her life than I did , I think . Allie was a beautiful little girl and now she 's a beautiful young lady . Her mother and I sat in bed last night talking about how she was always such a good child and now that she 's a teen , how she 's responsible and considerate . I don 't worry about her . She 'll be successful and whatever man earns her heart will be fortunate beyond his understanding . What I know for sure is that the sadness that I felt when my brother drove away from my apartment complex in North Houston will pale in comparison to how I will feel when Allie drives away after high school . |
Last night when I got home , Hero was looking worried . I assumed that he had disgraced himself and checked in the . . . ahem . . . naughty corner . Nothing . I checked the bins - no evidence of a raid . Strange . It was only when I took him out for his walk that he showed me the source of his anxiety : our log store had been blown into a tree and is stuck in the branches . It usually sits just through the window from the dog basket , so I can only imagine what Toto , sorry Hero , must have thought when it whirled through the air at the edge of his vision . It probably made quite a racket too , as the ground was strewn with the wood that had been inside . Oh my ! His golfing pal paid a short visit and rang one of FL 's oldest friends on his mobile phone , holding it to FL 's good ear so he could hear what was said . I was holding FL 's hand at the time and he squeezed my fingers , I assume to thank us for making that possible . His old pal was delighted and heartbroken at the same time . He had hoped to say goodbye in person , but is not well enough to travel . He breathes more slowly . Sometimes he does not breathe at all for a few moments , before resuming where he left off . It is not a struggle for breath , it is a peaceful slowing down . His head is thrown back into the pillows , his mouth wide . It was frightening at first , when I saw him this morning , but I soon got used to it . He is no longer drinking . He woke up properly just once today , as the nurses were moving him , and he saw me standing at his bedside with my knitting . His eyes focused briefly and I saw a smile flicker across his face . Then he was asleep again . There he lies , unable to speak , struggling to swallow a tiny sip of water , too weak to change his own position in bed . Utterly defenceless . And people choose this time to deliberately inflict pain by digging up the past . Then I showed him an old photograph ( from 1981 ) and told him what I saw : a happy family , joking together and enjoying each other 's company . And I reminded him that this was how it was , for so much of the time . That , OK , it was not perfect and that yes , he had made some mistakes along the way , but that anyone who knew them then would have agreed those children had a fantastic childhood and that he was at the centre of that . That he was a good father . There , the resident writer introduced me to the resident artist : " No obligation ! But I saw you were knitting and thought you might be a creative type ! " So we talked about spinning and his family 's weaving heritage on the Isle of Lewis , until I was called back to the bedside . It came to be time for me to leave , so I packed up my knitting and my book , and put on my coat . I offered him some water . He began to make frantic signals which I did not understand until I realised he was about to be sick . I replied that they know an awful lot about how to reduce physical pain and that if he accepts their help , he could be made comfortable . But that if he doesn 't take his pain relief he will be in distress and there is no need for it ! Physical pain can be treated ! When the nurse returned , he did not agree or disagree with the proposal that he have an anti - sickness injection . She took the opportunity to install a syringe driver , so that he can receive pain relief in the same way . She said she would be back in 20 minutes to change his position in bed . FL was in a slump when I arrived and had been left to sleep . However , the nurses were determined to straighten him up a bit - literally and metaphorically , with clean sheets and a wash . They asked me to leave while he protested . In the afternoon , an unfamiliar alarm went off and I could hear running feet and slamming doors . Things do not usually happen at a rapid pace in the hospice , because the worst thing that could possibly happen is the thing that everyone is expecting to happen . People are calmly and quietly brought in . . . and taken out . The Apprentice There was a new - to - us nurse on duty at the hospice today , and it turned out that she is a friend of one of FL 's golf buddies . I suspect she is always . . . what shall we say . . . ebullient ? She certainly took a lively interest in FL and I today . Overnight , they had given him a new gadget to try to prevent nappy rash . They call it a Uro - dome , which sounds like a sporting venue , but is actually a sort of condom attached to a collection bag . He didn 't know it was there and his face was a picture when I queried his lack of underpants and he took a perplexed peek under the sheet . . . ! After his wash , he wanted rid of the thing and I can 't say I blame him . Nice try , but . . . no . But he had me foxed this afternoon as he pointed soundlessly towards . . . what ? Where ? I made at least a dozen suggestions , all of which met with a frown and closed eyes . The Consultant explained to me what I already knew : that he is no longer eating , and drinking is painful . As his ability to swallow reduces , they will have to administer his pain relief through a syringe . Food is no longer offered in an attempt to sustain his life , but as a comforting gesture , to make him feel cared for and nurtured , with no real expectation that he will manage more than a tiny taste of something very soft and smooth on his palate . They had tried mixing his pain medication into a spoonful of yogurt , but he could not get it down . I know that he is absolutely worn out and weary . He cannot change position in bed without assistance . He cannot reach for the drink at his side . He cannot stand up without the support of two nurses . He is defeated . It is unbearable . So when it comes to be time for me to head home , I try to make it a lighthearted parting : a gentle kiss , a silly dance to the door and maybe even a chorus of " So long ! Farewell ! Auf Wiedersehen ! Goodbye - ee ! " But it is so hard . Starting with the positives : FL had a shower this morning and had many more drinks today than he has done in weeks . He has developed a preference for ice - cold water , so I am keeping a bottle in the fridge for him . He likes holding a heat pad against his sore ribs , wrapped in a hand knitted hat . From the number of bags of washing in his wardrobe , he seemed to have had a bad night and was wearing a hospital - issue t shirt . His arms are desperately , upsettingly thin . But that is to be expected since he has not eaten anything at all for almost a week , and even before that he had only been having a few spoonfuls of food here and there . Today FL had his first bath for very many years . He certainly hasn 't had one since 2004 , so it is reasonable to assume he hadn 't had one for a while before that . We have a shower over the bath at the farm , and it is easier to use that than turn on the boiler to heat the water , for the sake of a few shivery minutes sitting in the draught from the skylight . The nurses and I bullied him into having a bath , because we ( and initially he also ) agreed his aching ribs would feel much better after a long soak in a warm tub . However , halfway out of bed he changed his mind and panicked . I am pretty sure he was afraid it would be a cold and painful experience and he just wanted to stay warm and safe under the covers . But having got him that far , we decided to follow through . I calmed him down and the nurses manoeuvred him into the special bath chair , which looked a lot like something from a fairground , with a bar at the front to stop him falling out in the middle of the ride . He was gone for quite some time and when he returned he was subdued and just wanted to sleep . I was worried and thought we had pushed him too far , but when I spoke to the nurse later she said he had been smiling and telling them stories about his home town while he was in the bath . Wow ! He slept through lunchtime and pill - time and the doctor said it was best not to wake him . At about 3pm , three of his golf pals turned up . We made idle chitchat for a short while and then I realised that FL was awake , listening , but with his eyes closed . I offered him a drink of the apple juice I had brought in ( thank you to the commenter who suggested the cloudy sort , that tastes like pears ! ) and he was persuaded to sip some through a straw : his new favourite gadget that makes drinking and swallowing an awful lot easier . He then made a little pantomime of pointing at each of his friends in turn , before closing his eyes again . I knew he didn 't want to " entertain " them , but they had driven for an hour to visit , so I didn 't feel I could just throw them out . After a short while , he made it clear that he wanted to go to the toilet , and the pals took that as their signal to leave . I was reminded of them visiting 8 years ago , when he was first ill , and him saying to them : " Thank you for coming . . . and thank you even more for going ! " I have gradually been letting people know that FL is in the hospice . He had told me not to contact his family , but it occurred to me that if I did not , they would assume it was my decision not to tell them the situation . They may not respond to my emails , but I have given them the opportunity to be in touch before it is too late . However , he was soon slumped over his table , refusing to drink the " tainted water " . I offered to get him a drink from the vending machine and he asked for diet pepsi . They only had coke , but he drank half a cup of it . I then remembered bringing in a pot of prepared pears and offered them . He brightened up and asked just to have the juice , no actual fruit . So I strained that into a cup and he drank with obvious relish . But as the day went on he sank lower and lower in his chair and complained more and more of the pain in his ribs as " agony " . I called the nurse , who called the doctor , and they decided to try a heat pad . They are still trying to wean him off the opiate painkillers . They were going to prescribe a " heat spray " until I pointed out that it contains the same ingredient as aspirin , to which he is severely allergic . The doctor looked dubious " What would happen ? " she asked . " His throat would swell up and he would collapse ! " I replied . " Ah ! " I also caught up on some work - related reading . I have realised that I need to keep in touch with what is going on in the office , even if I can 't be there . Otherwise , it will be even harder to go back when the time comes . Thank you for all the packed lunch ideas : ) I know that this is the sensible thing to do , but I am finding it hard to be that organised right now . However , tomorrow I need to stop at the shop to get some pear juice for FL ( if such a thing exists ) and will see what I can find for me while I am there . I have got into something of a routine . I get up around 7am , breakfast and shower , gather together anything I need to take to the hospice , then feed and walk Hero . I take him out on the lead , and let him run free on the way back . He knows he will get a doggy treat when he gets home , so there is an incentive not to wander off on the return journey : ) I get home , feed and walk Hero and then feed myself . By that time I will not have eaten for almost 12 hours . The hospital MacMillan nurse has already remarked that I have lost weight . It is not intentional ! It has been difficult to look after myself when all my energy has been going on looking after FL . He had a bad night of pain after his fall , and the doctor had allowed him to have painkillers on demand . As a result , he had taken about 20mg of Hydromorphone : far more than he has ever had before . I don 't think the doctor had expected him to ask for so much and is keen to wean him off it again as soon as possible . And as I was sitting there , reading the comments about dog - care services on my phone , it dawned on me that if I stayed overnight , I would continue to behave like this . I would spend the night watching over him , listening to him breathe and reacting to every murmur with an offer of help . And that is not sustainable behaviour . He has been the sun around which I have orbited for so very many years . Sometimes my orbit has swung quite a long way out , but I have always been drawn back in . Right now I am in danger of going into freefall if I don 't keep a little distance , if I don 't remember that I am my own person and that I have to go on living after he has gone . He had several episodes of D and V , so was issued with what he is calling " Japanese pants " : made of nylon net , with a disposable nappy arrangement inside . ( I think he is referencing the simple garment issued to WW2 prisoners of war . ) This was all humiliating enough for him , but at 10am he tried to get to the loo on his own ( forbidden ! ) and forgot he had a drip in his arm , so fell badly , taking the stand with him , unplugging the saline solution . . . and had another dose of D and V in the process . I arrived shortly after . Painkillers were just being given and the doctor had been called . Ironically , he was much more awake today . He is still not eating but is being encouraged to drink . The pain in his bruised ( or possibly fractured ) ribs is now the main worry . Prior to that , his sickness was causing concern as it was blood - stained . My poor darling is having a terrible time of it . He has gone through all his pjs and trousers , so I will have to get them washed and back to him asap . The ( lovely ) doctor examined FL , ever so gently and kindly , and concluded that he has " done a couple of ribs " . Oh lordy . FL 's rib cage is peppered with myeloma lesions , so is very fragile . There was a very worrying time when a " sounding " of FL 's lungs suggested that he might have sustained an even more serious injury . However , on a second examination , the doctor was reassuring . FL is too frail to consider any intervention . He just needs to rest and ask for painkillers as required . Meantime , back home on the farm , Hero and I had some unexpected guests this morning . Next door 's sheep decided the grass was greener on this side of the fence . Grrrr . . . . ! He was soon fast asleep and did not stir when his lunch was brought . I took a break from my watch over him to get myself a coffee and while I was gone , he had to call for assistance to get to the toilet again . Oh dear ! At 2 . 30pm he woke and was clearly in some pain . I called the nurse , who said that he had not had any painkillers at all that day : they are trying to clear his system of morphine as they believe it is responsible for his kidney failure . She consulted the doctor and it was agreed to give him a Hydromorphone " breakthrough " pill . I woke him to say goodbye and he told me he had a new pain , somewhere below his left ribs . I decided to tell the doctor before I left , and she came straightaway . It was hard to know where he was pointing , as he was slumped in his chair , and the doctor decided the best idea would be to get him into bed , in case it was simply a case of cramp , caused by sleeping in an awkward position She was awfully kind , and said she was looking forward to talking to him about his book when he was feeling a bit better . Her main advice was to ensure he has a quiet weekend , to allow him to recover from the effects of the morphine which she thinks had built up to a toxic level . His kidneys had not been able to cope and everything had started to go wrong as a result . And I don 't know whether that means there might be hope of recovery from this . I don 't think that kidney damage is reversible . . . ? It is so difficult not to grasp at straws , to think that this is all just a temporary downturn and that he will soon be back to his old self . I suppose nobody knows for sure , not even the doctors . recent flood water , but we made it safely . We got the last space in the tiny car park . The receptionist showed us to his room : he has his own room there , with a lovely view needed to say to me , but was stumbling over the words . " Don 't worry , " I said " There 's no rush ! " " But I 'm on my way out ! " he said . " Like I said - there 's no rush . . . you 've got all day ! " I replied , which got a laugh out of him . We were given a leaflet setting out the facilities available to him in the hospice . He smiled to hear that ice cream is available in place of standard meals , if that is all that he can bear to eat . This had already become my substitute offering when the mere thought of healthy eating made him wince ! And he brightened up quite a bit when he heard that there is a writer in residence , whose sole function is to help patients get their words onto paper . I persuaded him to bring his book project with him and now he will have the chance to share it with a " professional " . Truly fantastic news ! The burden is no longer mine alone : ) We saw the Consultant , together with the fantastic MacMillan nurse . I told the stories of what had happened on Saturday and this morning and it all confirmed the decision to seek admission to the hospice . FL is now in full agreement with the plan . We discussed the possibility of him staying in the hospital while he waits , but the system is such that if he has a hospital bed he is no longer a priority . The MacMillan nurse said that in practice he has never known anyone make the transfer from hospital to hospice . Ah . So we are home again . The district nurse has rung to check up on us and to confirm that the night nurses will attend again tonight . I have their number to call for help if we have an emergency . As I write , FL is asleep with his head on the table . I need to light the log - burner and then go and make the bed . I bought another mattress protector in a flying visit to the supermarket on the way home . And another pair of pyjamas . A pair of district nurses came at 11am , took FL 's blood in readiness for tomorrow 's hospital appointment , and asked for the story of what had happened on Saturday night . They had a look around , to see how far FL has to walk to get to bed and bathroom and wondered about supplying a commode for the bedroom . . . ? But when they started to talk about installing a hospital bed I began to panic . They seemed to be saying that we could continue to manage on our own , that gradually he would spend more time in bed and that would make it easier in many ways . . . . ? I explained that there is only me and I can 't do it all on my own . I can 't cope on my own . And maybe that was the admission of defeat they were waiting for . Was it some sort of a test ? I don 't know . But by the time they left , they said they would be recommending to the GP that a place be found for FL in a hospice or the acute ward of the hospital . She said that was not her role : that this was what the GP was supposed to do . The polite version of what I said in reply was that he had not demonstrated such skills thus far . I told her that he had not returned phone calls I had made to the surgery , that he had only met FL on one occasion , so had no way of assessing how he is now compared to how he had been until maybe 3 weeks ago , and that I had not been impressed by the said GP 's professionalism on the night of his only visit ( the detail of which is not for blogging , but which I shared with her ) . Her eyebrows shot up and she declined to comment but agreed that it did not sound as if the GP had been of much assistance in progressing FL 's care . She was concerned that nobody had asked to test his urine despite me reporting to the district nurses that he had not been able to pee for 24 hours and had then produced scarily dark liquid . At the very least she thought he might have a UTI , but equally likely it could be evidence of his kidneys shutting down . She was appeased by his report of " ordinary " pee this morning . . . but nevertheless . . . The ridiculous irony of all this was that FL was completely engaged with the conversation . Positively perky . And this made it very difficult to communicate that just two days ago he was incoherent and confused and unable to stand up . That he had been so sleepy that he had let pills dissolve in his mouth , unable to swallow . I tried to explain that he spends 22 out of every 24 hours asleep and that I never know how he is going to be when he wakes up - perfectly fine , or totally out of touch with the world . She frowned , as if she didn 't believe me . And I can understand why - he was presenting as a perfectly normal , if somewhat frail elderly man , who had maybe had a bug over the weekend . She said she did not see why the hospice had been suggested : it is for assessment of people with symptoms that suggest they are near the end of their lives , which was clearly not the case or the GP would be aware . . . ? I pointed out that the GP had only met FL once , so how could he possibly make any sort of assessment of FL 's health ? And that the Consultant at the hospital , who has known FL for 8 years , was the one who proposed the hospice and had made a referral last Tuesday because she recognised the change in him and his rapid decline . That this was not my idea ! I eventually managed to tuck his chin over my shoulder to lift him and we shuffled towards the bathroom . However , he was falling asleep as we " danced " . I had to concentrate really hard to keep him upright while negotiating doors and light switches . By 10pm I was getting desperate . I managed to rouse him enough to take most of his pills . I didn 't attempt the bone - strengtheners as there are four of them and they felt like a bit of a luxury when he was struggling to swallow his morphine . I tucked my arms under his , with his chin on my shoulder and slowly stood up . He was trying to help me , but his legs just kept giving way . We were almost upright , when he lurched back down towards his chair , but he was too far from the edge and he and the cushions slid unceremoniously onto the floor in a heap , taking the telephone , his radio and a glass of water with him on the way down . We have neighbours , but we are not on particularly good terms with any of them . I was considering trying the middle ones , who are the most human , when I remembered that there were no cars outside . They had all taken the opportunity to get out while the roads were clear : the nearest set is pregnant , the middle set work shifts , and the furthest away one is not to be spoken of . It took forever to get through , and then another forever for the operator to find FL on the system . It would appear that the " new " GP is not yet fully functioning despite taking over FL 's practice in October . The operator eventually managed to identify FL as a " palliative patient " and said she would try to contact Marie Curie for assistance . However , it was the local district nurse service that rang back . They were quite reluctant to come out - did we not have friends or family ? Were we really completely alone ? ! It took them almost an hour to find us . I had explained the need to ignore the Road Closed sign , but the nurse was not impressed that this meant she had to drive through some shallow water to reach us . I had assumed they would have a " proper " car , if their job involved driving through Aberdeenshire in winter in the dead of night , but it was no better than mine ( a small hatchback ) . So they each took and arm and escorted him to the bathroom . I said he had not managed a pee since the morning and they agreed that was not good . But he still failed to perform . Their mobile phones had not stopped ringing since they arrived and it was clear that he was not the only elderly patient to fall that night . So after a short pause it was agreed he would just have to go to bed without passing water . Last night , rainwater started to pour through the kitchen skylight . The seal is dodgy and has been for years , but it usually only gives way when the snow starts to thaw . It is one of those things I need to take control of and get fixed . . . but it wasn 't going to happen at 10pm , so I stuck a sheep - feed bucket underneath , draped the French dresser with bin bags , and went to the bedroom to fetch FL 's hot water bottle . Ah . The small puddle by the east - facing wall had turned into a big pond which stretched from the fireplace to the door . I had to divert FL from his bed - wards stagger while I mopped it up . It took me the best part of an hour . I built a dam of towels round the affected area and escorted him through the shallows to the bed , which is at the other end of the room and therefore safe and dry . I had an hour - long circular detour yesterday , driving to the nearest town on a drugs run . It soon became apparent that I was not going to the market town after all , as every road in that direction was resolutely Closed due to flooding . During my final Diversion I encountered a spring bubbling up in the middle of the road and a group of frantic farmers trying to divert the water using diggers . I had to drive in entirely the opposite direction , towards the city , to get FL his painkillers . On the way back , I realised the farm is almost cut off on the city side too . Time to buy a tractor ? ! FL is going steady . We have settled into a pattern of getting up late , having breakfast together , and then him sleeping until dinner , when he will maybe eat a mouthful or two , take his pills , and go back to sleep again . The tricky bit is waking him out of that sleep to go to bed a couple of hours later . He complains I try to do it too quickly , but even so it takes me an hour or so of gentle coaxing before desperation makes me frogmarch him to bed , via the toilet . I have been granted compassionate leave for the remains of this week , on the understanding that I will update The Boss with the result of the various visitations planned for tomorrow : the Community Alarm people , the local MacMillan Nurse , and the District Nurse are all due to visit . But I can 't help thinking none of these will provide an immediate solution that allows me to go to the office on Monday . We have yet to hear from the hospice . Hopefully tomorrow . I think they will be key . I cannot imagine trying to tend to FL 's physical care in this cold wet draughty house when his condition deteriorates . I will make sure everyone understands that . FL himself is reaching that conclusion , which is half the battle . This is my third Qwist Hat . The first was knit out of Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop and was a present for my dear friend in Glasgow , Christine . I sent her an optional grey fluffy pompom , which she sewed on herself . Oh - and thank you for all those amazing reading recommendations ! I have joined an orderly queue at the library for most of them . Hopefully the roads will have been drained by the time it 's my turn ! We were at the hospital at 10 . 30 , having overslept til 8am , after a pain - filled night . I then had the dog to walk before we set off . There were several floods to drive through on the way . At 11 . 45 , a nurse appeared and woke him up - she was from " upstairs " where they had been waiting all morning to give him a blood transfusion , but they couldn 't go ahead without another blood test today and it was now too late for that to be done . I knew nothing about " upstairs " as we had been told to come to the clinic as usual . The nurse went off to find out what to do next . She asked how he had been since leaving hospital and I told her the highlights . She tried to engage him , but even once his hearing aid was in , he was struggling to keep up with the conversation . I explained that he was asleep for about 22 out of every 24 hours and that I had even tried withholding top - up painkillers in an attempt to keep him awake long enough to take his pills and eat breakfast - he hasn 't eaten a proper meal for days . He can 't bend his feet to get his trousers off and on . He can no longer stand upright . He can only walk with the support of my arm / the wall . The Consultant explained that she has stopped monitoring his myeloma because it is no longer relevant . The only thing they can really offer is pain relief , and when the myeloma begins to upset his kidneys it will have to be something other than morphine . He may find blood transfusions helpful in future , but his haemoglobin is at an acceptable level without one this week . ( Phew ! ) She said to him that she needed to discuss with us whether home is the right place for him now . . . He heard that alright and was very abrupt with her . He said he didn 't want to go to the hospice . She asked why not . He said it was somewhere that people went and didn 't come out again . She smiled and said that this was not the function of the place : it was somewhere that people who are already terminally ill go to be cared for in an appropriate way , where people understand their needs and are professional palliative carers . " So are you telling me that I am in that state ? " She asked me what my situation is as regards work and I explained that I was due to talk to The Boss tomorrow . She proposed getting the MacMillan nurse to investigate outpatient support from the hospice , and to involve the GP . I explained that the GP had not followed through with his promise of support once FL came home from hospital and had not returned phone calls . The holiday period was obviously a factor in this , but nevertheless . . . I also told her that Social Services has offered an alarm pendant and " possibly " help with a wash once a week . She was surprised that this was all that had been suggested . She asked if we had been offered a wheelchair so he could get out and about ? No . FL bristled at the idea of a wheelchair and said he was disappointed that nobody had suggested a physiotherapist to help him get his strength back . It was clear that FL was upset by the conversation , so we took him back to the waiting room and then went to find the MacMillan nurse . The nurse has undertaken to speed up a hospice outpatient appointment on the back of a referral from the Consultant ( to be made today ) , liaise with the GP , and investigate whether the local hospital could offer anything along the same lines as the hospice , if only to let me get to work / some respite for a few hours a week . We agreed I would report back once I had been able to talk to The Boss . A bit tearful , but in some ways relieved that it has been properly spelled out that this is IT . Nobody can tell us how long it will take , but he is dying . Deep breath . He has been asleep since we got home . And that is the problem at the heart of the situation right now . He is not really " present " any longer . If I was his daughter and not his wife , perhaps I could cheerily deliver him to the nearest care facility , whether he wanted it or not , and carry on with my life . But it 's not like that . He is still my First Love . We have history . He is The One . So I have to knuckle down and do the best I can for him in his final days / weeks / months . And he is still a proud man - he is having no truck with wheelchairs or walking sticks or elevated plastic toilet seats or being helped to wash . He would just rather not . Which is only fine up to a point . Sometimes I have to just make the decision and follow it through , for both of our sakes . This is a blog post that I believe needs to be written because there are other carers out there with as little idea as me of what it is actually means to care for their dying husband . Nobody tells you . The only information on " end stage myeloma " I can find from UK - based health websites just tries to tell me that everything will be alright : there are support networks and people who care and they will take over and you will not have to worry . Um no . . . not exactly . Let me tell you now : it is pretty much like having a new born baby but in reverse : no sleep unless the child sleeps , feeding , toileting , washing , and never leaving the infant unattended . And however much you love that child , it is hard work and it is exhausting . And unlike having a baby , which grows up and becomes more able to do things for itself , the more time goes on the less your husband will be able to do for himself . Your life will be consumed by caring for the other person , with no possibility of a positive outcome . And that is why I write this down . And why I indulge myself in crafty pursuits . And why I make lists of books I want to read and why I buy myself a new raincoat and wellies . I am shoring myself up against the incoming storm that WILL wipe away the life we have built together . And if you don 't want to read about that , please just stay away from this little space of mine . It 's for the best . Thank you . |
Last night when I got home , Hero was looking worried . I assumed that he had disgraced himself and checked in the . . . ahem . . . naughty corner . Nothing . I checked the bins - no evidence of a raid . Strange . It was only when I took him out for his walk that he showed me the source of his anxiety : our log store had been blown into a tree and is stuck in the branches . It usually sits just through the window from the dog basket , so I can only imagine what Toto , sorry Hero , must have thought when it whirled through the air at the edge of his vision . It probably made quite a racket too , as the ground was strewn with the wood that had been inside . Oh my ! His golfing pal paid a short visit and rang one of FL 's oldest friends on his mobile phone , holding it to FL 's good ear so he could hear what was said . I was holding FL 's hand at the time and he squeezed my fingers , I assume to thank us for making that possible . His old pal was delighted and heartbroken at the same time . He had hoped to say goodbye in person , but is not well enough to travel . He breathes more slowly . Sometimes he does not breathe at all for a few moments , before resuming where he left off . It is not a struggle for breath , it is a peaceful slowing down . His head is thrown back into the pillows , his mouth wide . It was frightening at first , when I saw him this morning , but I soon got used to it . He is no longer drinking . He woke up properly just once today , as the nurses were moving him , and he saw me standing at his bedside with my knitting . His eyes focused briefly and I saw a smile flicker across his face . Then he was asleep again . There he lies , unable to speak , struggling to swallow a tiny sip of water , too weak to change his own position in bed . Utterly defenceless . And people choose this time to deliberately inflict pain by digging up the past . Then I showed him an old photograph ( from 1981 ) and told him what I saw : a happy family , joking together and enjoying each other 's company . And I reminded him that this was how it was , for so much of the time . That , OK , it was not perfect and that yes , he had made some mistakes along the way , but that anyone who knew them then would have agreed those children had a fantastic childhood and that he was at the centre of that . That he was a good father . There , the resident writer introduced me to the resident artist : " No obligation ! But I saw you were knitting and thought you might be a creative type ! " So we talked about spinning and his family 's weaving heritage on the Isle of Lewis , until I was called back to the bedside . It came to be time for me to leave , so I packed up my knitting and my book , and put on my coat . I offered him some water . He began to make frantic signals which I did not understand until I realised he was about to be sick . I replied that they know an awful lot about how to reduce physical pain and that if he accepts their help , he could be made comfortable . But that if he doesn 't take his pain relief he will be in distress and there is no need for it ! Physical pain can be treated ! When the nurse returned , he did not agree or disagree with the proposal that he have an anti - sickness injection . She took the opportunity to install a syringe driver , so that he can receive pain relief in the same way . She said she would be back in 20 minutes to change his position in bed . FL was in a slump when I arrived and had been left to sleep . However , the nurses were determined to straighten him up a bit - literally and metaphorically , with clean sheets and a wash . They asked me to leave while he protested . In the afternoon , an unfamiliar alarm went off and I could hear running feet and slamming doors . Things do not usually happen at a rapid pace in the hospice , because the worst thing that could possibly happen is the thing that everyone is expecting to happen . People are calmly and quietly brought in . . . and taken out . The Apprentice There was a new - to - us nurse on duty at the hospice today , and it turned out that she is a friend of one of FL 's golf buddies . I suspect she is always . . . what shall we say . . . ebullient ? She certainly took a lively interest in FL and I today . Overnight , they had given him a new gadget to try to prevent nappy rash . They call it a Uro - dome , which sounds like a sporting venue , but is actually a sort of condom attached to a collection bag . He didn 't know it was there and his face was a picture when I queried his lack of underpants and he took a perplexed peek under the sheet . . . ! After his wash , he wanted rid of the thing and I can 't say I blame him . Nice try , but . . . no . But he had me foxed this afternoon as he pointed soundlessly towards . . . what ? Where ? I made at least a dozen suggestions , all of which met with a frown and closed eyes . The Consultant explained to me what I already knew : that he is no longer eating , and drinking is painful . As his ability to swallow reduces , they will have to administer his pain relief through a syringe . Food is no longer offered in an attempt to sustain his life , but as a comforting gesture , to make him feel cared for and nurtured , with no real expectation that he will manage more than a tiny taste of something very soft and smooth on his palate . They had tried mixing his pain medication into a spoonful of yogurt , but he could not get it down . I know that he is absolutely worn out and weary . He cannot change position in bed without assistance . He cannot reach for the drink at his side . He cannot stand up without the support of two nurses . He is defeated . It is unbearable . So when it comes to be time for me to head home , I try to make it a lighthearted parting : a gentle kiss , a silly dance to the door and maybe even a chorus of " So long ! Farewell ! Auf Wiedersehen ! Goodbye - ee ! " But it is so hard . Starting with the positives : FL had a shower this morning and had many more drinks today than he has done in weeks . He has developed a preference for ice - cold water , so I am keeping a bottle in the fridge for him . He likes holding a heat pad against his sore ribs , wrapped in a hand knitted hat . From the number of bags of washing in his wardrobe , he seemed to have had a bad night and was wearing a hospital - issue t shirt . His arms are desperately , upsettingly thin . But that is to be expected since he has not eaten anything at all for almost a week , and even before that he had only been having a few spoonfuls of food here and there . Today FL had his first bath for very many years . He certainly hasn 't had one since 2004 , so it is reasonable to assume he hadn 't had one for a while before that . We have a shower over the bath at the farm , and it is easier to use that than turn on the boiler to heat the water , for the sake of a few shivery minutes sitting in the draught from the skylight . The nurses and I bullied him into having a bath , because we ( and initially he also ) agreed his aching ribs would feel much better after a long soak in a warm tub . However , halfway out of bed he changed his mind and panicked . I am pretty sure he was afraid it would be a cold and painful experience and he just wanted to stay warm and safe under the covers . But having got him that far , we decided to follow through . I calmed him down and the nurses manoeuvred him into the special bath chair , which looked a lot like something from a fairground , with a bar at the front to stop him falling out in the middle of the ride . He was gone for quite some time and when he returned he was subdued and just wanted to sleep . I was worried and thought we had pushed him too far , but when I spoke to the nurse later she said he had been smiling and telling them stories about his home town while he was in the bath . Wow ! He slept through lunchtime and pill - time and the doctor said it was best not to wake him . At about 3pm , three of his golf pals turned up . We made idle chitchat for a short while and then I realised that FL was awake , listening , but with his eyes closed . I offered him a drink of the apple juice I had brought in ( thank you to the commenter who suggested the cloudy sort , that tastes like pears ! ) and he was persuaded to sip some through a straw : his new favourite gadget that makes drinking and swallowing an awful lot easier . He then made a little pantomime of pointing at each of his friends in turn , before closing his eyes again . I knew he didn 't want to " entertain " them , but they had driven for an hour to visit , so I didn 't feel I could just throw them out . After a short while , he made it clear that he wanted to go to the toilet , and the pals took that as their signal to leave . I was reminded of them visiting 8 years ago , when he was first ill , and him saying to them : " Thank you for coming . . . and thank you even more for going ! " I have gradually been letting people know that FL is in the hospice . He had told me not to contact his family , but it occurred to me that if I did not , they would assume it was my decision not to tell them the situation . They may not respond to my emails , but I have given them the opportunity to be in touch before it is too late . However , he was soon slumped over his table , refusing to drink the " tainted water " . I offered to get him a drink from the vending machine and he asked for diet pepsi . They only had coke , but he drank half a cup of it . I then remembered bringing in a pot of prepared pears and offered them . He brightened up and asked just to have the juice , no actual fruit . So I strained that into a cup and he drank with obvious relish . But as the day went on he sank lower and lower in his chair and complained more and more of the pain in his ribs as " agony " . I called the nurse , who called the doctor , and they decided to try a heat pad . They are still trying to wean him off the opiate painkillers . They were going to prescribe a " heat spray " until I pointed out that it contains the same ingredient as aspirin , to which he is severely allergic . The doctor looked dubious " What would happen ? " she asked . " His throat would swell up and he would collapse ! " I replied . " Ah ! " I also caught up on some work - related reading . I have realised that I need to keep in touch with what is going on in the office , even if I can 't be there . Otherwise , it will be even harder to go back when the time comes . Thank you for all the packed lunch ideas : ) I know that this is the sensible thing to do , but I am finding it hard to be that organised right now . However , tomorrow I need to stop at the shop to get some pear juice for FL ( if such a thing exists ) and will see what I can find for me while I am there . I have got into something of a routine . I get up around 7am , breakfast and shower , gather together anything I need to take to the hospice , then feed and walk Hero . I take him out on the lead , and let him run free on the way back . He knows he will get a doggy treat when he gets home , so there is an incentive not to wander off on the return journey : ) I get home , feed and walk Hero and then feed myself . By that time I will not have eaten for almost 12 hours . The hospital MacMillan nurse has already remarked that I have lost weight . It is not intentional ! It has been difficult to look after myself when all my energy has been going on looking after FL . He had a bad night of pain after his fall , and the doctor had allowed him to have painkillers on demand . As a result , he had taken about 20mg of Hydromorphone : far more than he has ever had before . I don 't think the doctor had expected him to ask for so much and is keen to wean him off it again as soon as possible . And as I was sitting there , reading the comments about dog - care services on my phone , it dawned on me that if I stayed overnight , I would continue to behave like this . I would spend the night watching over him , listening to him breathe and reacting to every murmur with an offer of help . And that is not sustainable behaviour . He has been the sun around which I have orbited for so very many years . Sometimes my orbit has swung quite a long way out , but I have always been drawn back in . Right now I am in danger of going into freefall if I don 't keep a little distance , if I don 't remember that I am my own person and that I have to go on living after he has gone . He had several episodes of D and V , so was issued with what he is calling " Japanese pants " : made of nylon net , with a disposable nappy arrangement inside . ( I think he is referencing the simple garment issued to WW2 prisoners of war . ) This was all humiliating enough for him , but at 10am he tried to get to the loo on his own ( forbidden ! ) and forgot he had a drip in his arm , so fell badly , taking the stand with him , unplugging the saline solution . . . and had another dose of D and V in the process . I arrived shortly after . Painkillers were just being given and the doctor had been called . Ironically , he was much more awake today . He is still not eating but is being encouraged to drink . The pain in his bruised ( or possibly fractured ) ribs is now the main worry . Prior to that , his sickness was causing concern as it was blood - stained . My poor darling is having a terrible time of it . He has gone through all his pjs and trousers , so I will have to get them washed and back to him asap . The ( lovely ) doctor examined FL , ever so gently and kindly , and concluded that he has " done a couple of ribs " . Oh lordy . FL 's rib cage is peppered with myeloma lesions , so is very fragile . There was a very worrying time when a " sounding " of FL 's lungs suggested that he might have sustained an even more serious injury . However , on a second examination , the doctor was reassuring . FL is too frail to consider any intervention . He just needs to rest and ask for painkillers as required . Meantime , back home on the farm , Hero and I had some unexpected guests this morning . Next door 's sheep decided the grass was greener on this side of the fence . Grrrr . . . . ! He was soon fast asleep and did not stir when his lunch was brought . I took a break from my watch over him to get myself a coffee and while I was gone , he had to call for assistance to get to the toilet again . Oh dear ! At 2 . 30pm he woke and was clearly in some pain . I called the nurse , who said that he had not had any painkillers at all that day : they are trying to clear his system of morphine as they believe it is responsible for his kidney failure . She consulted the doctor and it was agreed to give him a Hydromorphone " breakthrough " pill . I woke him to say goodbye and he told me he had a new pain , somewhere below his left ribs . I decided to tell the doctor before I left , and she came straightaway . It was hard to know where he was pointing , as he was slumped in his chair , and the doctor decided the best idea would be to get him into bed , in case it was simply a case of cramp , caused by sleeping in an awkward position She was awfully kind , and said she was looking forward to talking to him about his book when he was feeling a bit better . Her main advice was to ensure he has a quiet weekend , to allow him to recover from the effects of the morphine which she thinks had built up to a toxic level . His kidneys had not been able to cope and everything had started to go wrong as a result . And I don 't know whether that means there might be hope of recovery from this . I don 't think that kidney damage is reversible . . . ? It is so difficult not to grasp at straws , to think that this is all just a temporary downturn and that he will soon be back to his old self . I suppose nobody knows for sure , not even the doctors . recent flood water , but we made it safely . We got the last space in the tiny car park . The receptionist showed us to his room : he has his own room there , with a lovely view needed to say to me , but was stumbling over the words . " Don 't worry , " I said " There 's no rush ! " " But I 'm on my way out ! " he said . " Like I said - there 's no rush . . . you 've got all day ! " I replied , which got a laugh out of him . We were given a leaflet setting out the facilities available to him in the hospice . He smiled to hear that ice cream is available in place of standard meals , if that is all that he can bear to eat . This had already become my substitute offering when the mere thought of healthy eating made him wince ! And he brightened up quite a bit when he heard that there is a writer in residence , whose sole function is to help patients get their words onto paper . I persuaded him to bring his book project with him and now he will have the chance to share it with a " professional " . Truly fantastic news ! The burden is no longer mine alone : ) We saw the Consultant , together with the fantastic MacMillan nurse . I told the stories of what had happened on Saturday and this morning and it all confirmed the decision to seek admission to the hospice . FL is now in full agreement with the plan . We discussed the possibility of him staying in the hospital while he waits , but the system is such that if he has a hospital bed he is no longer a priority . The MacMillan nurse said that in practice he has never known anyone make the transfer from hospital to hospice . Ah . So we are home again . The district nurse has rung to check up on us and to confirm that the night nurses will attend again tonight . I have their number to call for help if we have an emergency . As I write , FL is asleep with his head on the table . I need to light the log - burner and then go and make the bed . I bought another mattress protector in a flying visit to the supermarket on the way home . And another pair of pyjamas . A pair of district nurses came at 11am , took FL 's blood in readiness for tomorrow 's hospital appointment , and asked for the story of what had happened on Saturday night . They had a look around , to see how far FL has to walk to get to bed and bathroom and wondered about supplying a commode for the bedroom . . . ? But when they started to talk about installing a hospital bed I began to panic . They seemed to be saying that we could continue to manage on our own , that gradually he would spend more time in bed and that would make it easier in many ways . . . . ? I explained that there is only me and I can 't do it all on my own . I can 't cope on my own . And maybe that was the admission of defeat they were waiting for . Was it some sort of a test ? I don 't know . But by the time they left , they said they would be recommending to the GP that a place be found for FL in a hospice or the acute ward of the hospital . She said that was not her role : that this was what the GP was supposed to do . The polite version of what I said in reply was that he had not demonstrated such skills thus far . I told her that he had not returned phone calls I had made to the surgery , that he had only met FL on one occasion , so had no way of assessing how he is now compared to how he had been until maybe 3 weeks ago , and that I had not been impressed by the said GP 's professionalism on the night of his only visit ( the detail of which is not for blogging , but which I shared with her ) . Her eyebrows shot up and she declined to comment but agreed that it did not sound as if the GP had been of much assistance in progressing FL 's care . She was concerned that nobody had asked to test his urine despite me reporting to the district nurses that he had not been able to pee for 24 hours and had then produced scarily dark liquid . At the very least she thought he might have a UTI , but equally likely it could be evidence of his kidneys shutting down . She was appeased by his report of " ordinary " pee this morning . . . but nevertheless . . . The ridiculous irony of all this was that FL was completely engaged with the conversation . Positively perky . And this made it very difficult to communicate that just two days ago he was incoherent and confused and unable to stand up . That he had been so sleepy that he had let pills dissolve in his mouth , unable to swallow . I tried to explain that he spends 22 out of every 24 hours asleep and that I never know how he is going to be when he wakes up - perfectly fine , or totally out of touch with the world . She frowned , as if she didn 't believe me . And I can understand why - he was presenting as a perfectly normal , if somewhat frail elderly man , who had maybe had a bug over the weekend . She said she did not see why the hospice had been suggested : it is for assessment of people with symptoms that suggest they are near the end of their lives , which was clearly not the case or the GP would be aware . . . ? I pointed out that the GP had only met FL once , so how could he possibly make any sort of assessment of FL 's health ? And that the Consultant at the hospital , who has known FL for 8 years , was the one who proposed the hospice and had made a referral last Tuesday because she recognised the change in him and his rapid decline . That this was not my idea ! I eventually managed to tuck his chin over my shoulder to lift him and we shuffled towards the bathroom . However , he was falling asleep as we " danced " . I had to concentrate really hard to keep him upright while negotiating doors and light switches . By 10pm I was getting desperate . I managed to rouse him enough to take most of his pills . I didn 't attempt the bone - strengtheners as there are four of them and they felt like a bit of a luxury when he was struggling to swallow his morphine . I tucked my arms under his , with his chin on my shoulder and slowly stood up . He was trying to help me , but his legs just kept giving way . We were almost upright , when he lurched back down towards his chair , but he was too far from the edge and he and the cushions slid unceremoniously onto the floor in a heap , taking the telephone , his radio and a glass of water with him on the way down . We have neighbours , but we are not on particularly good terms with any of them . I was considering trying the middle ones , who are the most human , when I remembered that there were no cars outside . They had all taken the opportunity to get out while the roads were clear : the nearest set is pregnant , the middle set work shifts , and the furthest away one is not to be spoken of . It took forever to get through , and then another forever for the operator to find FL on the system . It would appear that the " new " GP is not yet fully functioning despite taking over FL 's practice in October . The operator eventually managed to identify FL as a " palliative patient " and said she would try to contact Marie Curie for assistance . However , it was the local district nurse service that rang back . They were quite reluctant to come out - did we not have friends or family ? Were we really completely alone ? ! It took them almost an hour to find us . I had explained the need to ignore the Road Closed sign , but the nurse was not impressed that this meant she had to drive through some shallow water to reach us . I had assumed they would have a " proper " car , if their job involved driving through Aberdeenshire in winter in the dead of night , but it was no better than mine ( a small hatchback ) . So they each took and arm and escorted him to the bathroom . I said he had not managed a pee since the morning and they agreed that was not good . But he still failed to perform . Their mobile phones had not stopped ringing since they arrived and it was clear that he was not the only elderly patient to fall that night . So after a short pause it was agreed he would just have to go to bed without passing water . Last night , rainwater started to pour through the kitchen skylight . The seal is dodgy and has been for years , but it usually only gives way when the snow starts to thaw . It is one of those things I need to take control of and get fixed . . . but it wasn 't going to happen at 10pm , so I stuck a sheep - feed bucket underneath , draped the French dresser with bin bags , and went to the bedroom to fetch FL 's hot water bottle . Ah . The small puddle by the east - facing wall had turned into a big pond which stretched from the fireplace to the door . I had to divert FL from his bed - wards stagger while I mopped it up . It took me the best part of an hour . I built a dam of towels round the affected area and escorted him through the shallows to the bed , which is at the other end of the room and therefore safe and dry . I had an hour - long circular detour yesterday , driving to the nearest town on a drugs run . It soon became apparent that I was not going to the market town after all , as every road in that direction was resolutely Closed due to flooding . During my final Diversion I encountered a spring bubbling up in the middle of the road and a group of frantic farmers trying to divert the water using diggers . I had to drive in entirely the opposite direction , towards the city , to get FL his painkillers . On the way back , I realised the farm is almost cut off on the city side too . Time to buy a tractor ? ! FL is going steady . We have settled into a pattern of getting up late , having breakfast together , and then him sleeping until dinner , when he will maybe eat a mouthful or two , take his pills , and go back to sleep again . The tricky bit is waking him out of that sleep to go to bed a couple of hours later . He complains I try to do it too quickly , but even so it takes me an hour or so of gentle coaxing before desperation makes me frogmarch him to bed , via the toilet . I have been granted compassionate leave for the remains of this week , on the understanding that I will update The Boss with the result of the various visitations planned for tomorrow : the Community Alarm people , the local MacMillan Nurse , and the District Nurse are all due to visit . But I can 't help thinking none of these will provide an immediate solution that allows me to go to the office on Monday . We have yet to hear from the hospice . Hopefully tomorrow . I think they will be key . I cannot imagine trying to tend to FL 's physical care in this cold wet draughty house when his condition deteriorates . I will make sure everyone understands that . FL himself is reaching that conclusion , which is half the battle . This is my third Qwist Hat . The first was knit out of Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop and was a present for my dear friend in Glasgow , Christine . I sent her an optional grey fluffy pompom , which she sewed on herself . Oh - and thank you for all those amazing reading recommendations ! I have joined an orderly queue at the library for most of them . Hopefully the roads will have been drained by the time it 's my turn ! We were at the hospital at 10 . 30 , having overslept til 8am , after a pain - filled night . I then had the dog to walk before we set off . There were several floods to drive through on the way . At 11 . 45 , a nurse appeared and woke him up - she was from " upstairs " where they had been waiting all morning to give him a blood transfusion , but they couldn 't go ahead without another blood test today and it was now too late for that to be done . I knew nothing about " upstairs " as we had been told to come to the clinic as usual . The nurse went off to find out what to do next . She asked how he had been since leaving hospital and I told her the highlights . She tried to engage him , but even once his hearing aid was in , he was struggling to keep up with the conversation . I explained that he was asleep for about 22 out of every 24 hours and that I had even tried withholding top - up painkillers in an attempt to keep him awake long enough to take his pills and eat breakfast - he hasn 't eaten a proper meal for days . He can 't bend his feet to get his trousers off and on . He can no longer stand upright . He can only walk with the support of my arm / the wall . The Consultant explained that she has stopped monitoring his myeloma because it is no longer relevant . The only thing they can really offer is pain relief , and when the myeloma begins to upset his kidneys it will have to be something other than morphine . He may find blood transfusions helpful in future , but his haemoglobin is at an acceptable level without one this week . ( Phew ! ) She said to him that she needed to discuss with us whether home is the right place for him now . . . He heard that alright and was very abrupt with her . He said he didn 't want to go to the hospice . She asked why not . He said it was somewhere that people went and didn 't come out again . She smiled and said that this was not the function of the place : it was somewhere that people who are already terminally ill go to be cared for in an appropriate way , where people understand their needs and are professional palliative carers . " So are you telling me that I am in that state ? " She asked me what my situation is as regards work and I explained that I was due to talk to The Boss tomorrow . She proposed getting the MacMillan nurse to investigate outpatient support from the hospice , and to involve the GP . I explained that the GP had not followed through with his promise of support once FL came home from hospital and had not returned phone calls . The holiday period was obviously a factor in this , but nevertheless . . . I also told her that Social Services has offered an alarm pendant and " possibly " help with a wash once a week . She was surprised that this was all that had been suggested . She asked if we had been offered a wheelchair so he could get out and about ? No . FL bristled at the idea of a wheelchair and said he was disappointed that nobody had suggested a physiotherapist to help him get his strength back . It was clear that FL was upset by the conversation , so we took him back to the waiting room and then went to find the MacMillan nurse . The nurse has undertaken to speed up a hospice outpatient appointment on the back of a referral from the Consultant ( to be made today ) , liaise with the GP , and investigate whether the local hospital could offer anything along the same lines as the hospice , if only to let me get to work / some respite for a few hours a week . We agreed I would report back once I had been able to talk to The Boss . A bit tearful , but in some ways relieved that it has been properly spelled out that this is IT . Nobody can tell us how long it will take , but he is dying . Deep breath . He has been asleep since we got home . And that is the problem at the heart of the situation right now . He is not really " present " any longer . If I was his daughter and not his wife , perhaps I could cheerily deliver him to the nearest care facility , whether he wanted it or not , and carry on with my life . But it 's not like that . He is still my First Love . We have history . He is The One . So I have to knuckle down and do the best I can for him in his final days / weeks / months . And he is still a proud man - he is having no truck with wheelchairs or walking sticks or elevated plastic toilet seats or being helped to wash . He would just rather not . Which is only fine up to a point . Sometimes I have to just make the decision and follow it through , for both of our sakes . This is a blog post that I believe needs to be written because there are other carers out there with as little idea as me of what it is actually means to care for their dying husband . Nobody tells you . The only information on " end stage myeloma " I can find from UK - based health websites just tries to tell me that everything will be alright : there are support networks and people who care and they will take over and you will not have to worry . Um no . . . not exactly . Let me tell you now : it is pretty much like having a new born baby but in reverse : no sleep unless the child sleeps , feeding , toileting , washing , and never leaving the infant unattended . And however much you love that child , it is hard work and it is exhausting . And unlike having a baby , which grows up and becomes more able to do things for itself , the more time goes on the less your husband will be able to do for himself . Your life will be consumed by caring for the other person , with no possibility of a positive outcome . And that is why I write this down . And why I indulge myself in crafty pursuits . And why I make lists of books I want to read and why I buy myself a new raincoat and wellies . I am shoring myself up against the incoming storm that WILL wipe away the life we have built together . And if you don 't want to read about that , please just stay away from this little space of mine . It 's for the best . Thank you . |
Last night when I got home , Hero was looking worried . I assumed that he had disgraced himself and checked in the . . . ahem . . . naughty corner . Nothing . I checked the bins - no evidence of a raid . Strange . It was only when I took him out for his walk that he showed me the source of his anxiety : our log store had been blown into a tree and is stuck in the branches . It usually sits just through the window from the dog basket , so I can only imagine what Toto , sorry Hero , must have thought when it whirled through the air at the edge of his vision . It probably made quite a racket too , as the ground was strewn with the wood that had been inside . Oh my ! His golfing pal paid a short visit and rang one of FL 's oldest friends on his mobile phone , holding it to FL 's good ear so he could hear what was said . I was holding FL 's hand at the time and he squeezed my fingers , I assume to thank us for making that possible . His old pal was delighted and heartbroken at the same time . He had hoped to say goodbye in person , but is not well enough to travel . He breathes more slowly . Sometimes he does not breathe at all for a few moments , before resuming where he left off . It is not a struggle for breath , it is a peaceful slowing down . His head is thrown back into the pillows , his mouth wide . It was frightening at first , when I saw him this morning , but I soon got used to it . He is no longer drinking . He woke up properly just once today , as the nurses were moving him , and he saw me standing at his bedside with my knitting . His eyes focused briefly and I saw a smile flicker across his face . Then he was asleep again . There he lies , unable to speak , struggling to swallow a tiny sip of water , too weak to change his own position in bed . Utterly defenceless . And people choose this time to deliberately inflict pain by digging up the past . Then I showed him an old photograph ( from 1981 ) and told him what I saw : a happy family , joking together and enjoying each other 's company . And I reminded him that this was how it was , for so much of the time . That , OK , it was not perfect and that yes , he had made some mistakes along the way , but that anyone who knew them then would have agreed those children had a fantastic childhood and that he was at the centre of that . That he was a good father . There , the resident writer introduced me to the resident artist : " No obligation ! But I saw you were knitting and thought you might be a creative type ! " So we talked about spinning and his family 's weaving heritage on the Isle of Lewis , until I was called back to the bedside . It came to be time for me to leave , so I packed up my knitting and my book , and put on my coat . I offered him some water . He began to make frantic signals which I did not understand until I realised he was about to be sick . I replied that they know an awful lot about how to reduce physical pain and that if he accepts their help , he could be made comfortable . But that if he doesn 't take his pain relief he will be in distress and there is no need for it ! Physical pain can be treated ! When the nurse returned , he did not agree or disagree with the proposal that he have an anti - sickness injection . She took the opportunity to install a syringe driver , so that he can receive pain relief in the same way . She said she would be back in 20 minutes to change his position in bed . FL was in a slump when I arrived and had been left to sleep . However , the nurses were determined to straighten him up a bit - literally and metaphorically , with clean sheets and a wash . They asked me to leave while he protested . In the afternoon , an unfamiliar alarm went off and I could hear running feet and slamming doors . Things do not usually happen at a rapid pace in the hospice , because the worst thing that could possibly happen is the thing that everyone is expecting to happen . People are calmly and quietly brought in . . . and taken out . The Apprentice There was a new - to - us nurse on duty at the hospice today , and it turned out that she is a friend of one of FL 's golf buddies . I suspect she is always . . . what shall we say . . . ebullient ? She certainly took a lively interest in FL and I today . Overnight , they had given him a new gadget to try to prevent nappy rash . They call it a Uro - dome , which sounds like a sporting venue , but is actually a sort of condom attached to a collection bag . He didn 't know it was there and his face was a picture when I queried his lack of underpants and he took a perplexed peek under the sheet . . . ! After his wash , he wanted rid of the thing and I can 't say I blame him . Nice try , but . . . no . But he had me foxed this afternoon as he pointed soundlessly towards . . . what ? Where ? I made at least a dozen suggestions , all of which met with a frown and closed eyes . The Consultant explained to me what I already knew : that he is no longer eating , and drinking is painful . As his ability to swallow reduces , they will have to administer his pain relief through a syringe . Food is no longer offered in an attempt to sustain his life , but as a comforting gesture , to make him feel cared for and nurtured , with no real expectation that he will manage more than a tiny taste of something very soft and smooth on his palate . They had tried mixing his pain medication into a spoonful of yogurt , but he could not get it down . I know that he is absolutely worn out and weary . He cannot change position in bed without assistance . He cannot reach for the drink at his side . He cannot stand up without the support of two nurses . He is defeated . It is unbearable . So when it comes to be time for me to head home , I try to make it a lighthearted parting : a gentle kiss , a silly dance to the door and maybe even a chorus of " So long ! Farewell ! Auf Wiedersehen ! Goodbye - ee ! " But it is so hard . Starting with the positives : FL had a shower this morning and had many more drinks today than he has done in weeks . He has developed a preference for ice - cold water , so I am keeping a bottle in the fridge for him . He likes holding a heat pad against his sore ribs , wrapped in a hand knitted hat . From the number of bags of washing in his wardrobe , he seemed to have had a bad night and was wearing a hospital - issue t shirt . His arms are desperately , upsettingly thin . But that is to be expected since he has not eaten anything at all for almost a week , and even before that he had only been having a few spoonfuls of food here and there . Today FL had his first bath for very many years . He certainly hasn 't had one since 2004 , so it is reasonable to assume he hadn 't had one for a while before that . We have a shower over the bath at the farm , and it is easier to use that than turn on the boiler to heat the water , for the sake of a few shivery minutes sitting in the draught from the skylight . The nurses and I bullied him into having a bath , because we ( and initially he also ) agreed his aching ribs would feel much better after a long soak in a warm tub . However , halfway out of bed he changed his mind and panicked . I am pretty sure he was afraid it would be a cold and painful experience and he just wanted to stay warm and safe under the covers . But having got him that far , we decided to follow through . I calmed him down and the nurses manoeuvred him into the special bath chair , which looked a lot like something from a fairground , with a bar at the front to stop him falling out in the middle of the ride . He was gone for quite some time and when he returned he was subdued and just wanted to sleep . I was worried and thought we had pushed him too far , but when I spoke to the nurse later she said he had been smiling and telling them stories about his home town while he was in the bath . Wow ! He slept through lunchtime and pill - time and the doctor said it was best not to wake him . At about 3pm , three of his golf pals turned up . We made idle chitchat for a short while and then I realised that FL was awake , listening , but with his eyes closed . I offered him a drink of the apple juice I had brought in ( thank you to the commenter who suggested the cloudy sort , that tastes like pears ! ) and he was persuaded to sip some through a straw : his new favourite gadget that makes drinking and swallowing an awful lot easier . He then made a little pantomime of pointing at each of his friends in turn , before closing his eyes again . I knew he didn 't want to " entertain " them , but they had driven for an hour to visit , so I didn 't feel I could just throw them out . After a short while , he made it clear that he wanted to go to the toilet , and the pals took that as their signal to leave . I was reminded of them visiting 8 years ago , when he was first ill , and him saying to them : " Thank you for coming . . . and thank you even more for going ! " I have gradually been letting people know that FL is in the hospice . He had told me not to contact his family , but it occurred to me that if I did not , they would assume it was my decision not to tell them the situation . They may not respond to my emails , but I have given them the opportunity to be in touch before it is too late . However , he was soon slumped over his table , refusing to drink the " tainted water " . I offered to get him a drink from the vending machine and he asked for diet pepsi . They only had coke , but he drank half a cup of it . I then remembered bringing in a pot of prepared pears and offered them . He brightened up and asked just to have the juice , no actual fruit . So I strained that into a cup and he drank with obvious relish . But as the day went on he sank lower and lower in his chair and complained more and more of the pain in his ribs as " agony " . I called the nurse , who called the doctor , and they decided to try a heat pad . They are still trying to wean him off the opiate painkillers . They were going to prescribe a " heat spray " until I pointed out that it contains the same ingredient as aspirin , to which he is severely allergic . The doctor looked dubious " What would happen ? " she asked . " His throat would swell up and he would collapse ! " I replied . " Ah ! " I also caught up on some work - related reading . I have realised that I need to keep in touch with what is going on in the office , even if I can 't be there . Otherwise , it will be even harder to go back when the time comes . Thank you for all the packed lunch ideas : ) I know that this is the sensible thing to do , but I am finding it hard to be that organised right now . However , tomorrow I need to stop at the shop to get some pear juice for FL ( if such a thing exists ) and will see what I can find for me while I am there . I have got into something of a routine . I get up around 7am , breakfast and shower , gather together anything I need to take to the hospice , then feed and walk Hero . I take him out on the lead , and let him run free on the way back . He knows he will get a doggy treat when he gets home , so there is an incentive not to wander off on the return journey : ) I get home , feed and walk Hero and then feed myself . By that time I will not have eaten for almost 12 hours . The hospital MacMillan nurse has already remarked that I have lost weight . It is not intentional ! It has been difficult to look after myself when all my energy has been going on looking after FL . He had a bad night of pain after his fall , and the doctor had allowed him to have painkillers on demand . As a result , he had taken about 20mg of Hydromorphone : far more than he has ever had before . I don 't think the doctor had expected him to ask for so much and is keen to wean him off it again as soon as possible . And as I was sitting there , reading the comments about dog - care services on my phone , it dawned on me that if I stayed overnight , I would continue to behave like this . I would spend the night watching over him , listening to him breathe and reacting to every murmur with an offer of help . And that is not sustainable behaviour . He has been the sun around which I have orbited for so very many years . Sometimes my orbit has swung quite a long way out , but I have always been drawn back in . Right now I am in danger of going into freefall if I don 't keep a little distance , if I don 't remember that I am my own person and that I have to go on living after he has gone . He had several episodes of D and V , so was issued with what he is calling " Japanese pants " : made of nylon net , with a disposable nappy arrangement inside . ( I think he is referencing the simple garment issued to WW2 prisoners of war . ) This was all humiliating enough for him , but at 10am he tried to get to the loo on his own ( forbidden ! ) and forgot he had a drip in his arm , so fell badly , taking the stand with him , unplugging the saline solution . . . and had another dose of D and V in the process . I arrived shortly after . Painkillers were just being given and the doctor had been called . Ironically , he was much more awake today . He is still not eating but is being encouraged to drink . The pain in his bruised ( or possibly fractured ) ribs is now the main worry . Prior to that , his sickness was causing concern as it was blood - stained . My poor darling is having a terrible time of it . He has gone through all his pjs and trousers , so I will have to get them washed and back to him asap . The ( lovely ) doctor examined FL , ever so gently and kindly , and concluded that he has " done a couple of ribs " . Oh lordy . FL 's rib cage is peppered with myeloma lesions , so is very fragile . There was a very worrying time when a " sounding " of FL 's lungs suggested that he might have sustained an even more serious injury . However , on a second examination , the doctor was reassuring . FL is too frail to consider any intervention . He just needs to rest and ask for painkillers as required . Meantime , back home on the farm , Hero and I had some unexpected guests this morning . Next door 's sheep decided the grass was greener on this side of the fence . Grrrr . . . . ! He was soon fast asleep and did not stir when his lunch was brought . I took a break from my watch over him to get myself a coffee and while I was gone , he had to call for assistance to get to the toilet again . Oh dear ! At 2 . 30pm he woke and was clearly in some pain . I called the nurse , who said that he had not had any painkillers at all that day : they are trying to clear his system of morphine as they believe it is responsible for his kidney failure . She consulted the doctor and it was agreed to give him a Hydromorphone " breakthrough " pill . I woke him to say goodbye and he told me he had a new pain , somewhere below his left ribs . I decided to tell the doctor before I left , and she came straightaway . It was hard to know where he was pointing , as he was slumped in his chair , and the doctor decided the best idea would be to get him into bed , in case it was simply a case of cramp , caused by sleeping in an awkward position She was awfully kind , and said she was looking forward to talking to him about his book when he was feeling a bit better . Her main advice was to ensure he has a quiet weekend , to allow him to recover from the effects of the morphine which she thinks had built up to a toxic level . His kidneys had not been able to cope and everything had started to go wrong as a result . And I don 't know whether that means there might be hope of recovery from this . I don 't think that kidney damage is reversible . . . ? It is so difficult not to grasp at straws , to think that this is all just a temporary downturn and that he will soon be back to his old self . I suppose nobody knows for sure , not even the doctors . recent flood water , but we made it safely . We got the last space in the tiny car park . The receptionist showed us to his room : he has his own room there , with a lovely view needed to say to me , but was stumbling over the words . " Don 't worry , " I said " There 's no rush ! " " But I 'm on my way out ! " he said . " Like I said - there 's no rush . . . you 've got all day ! " I replied , which got a laugh out of him . We were given a leaflet setting out the facilities available to him in the hospice . He smiled to hear that ice cream is available in place of standard meals , if that is all that he can bear to eat . This had already become my substitute offering when the mere thought of healthy eating made him wince ! And he brightened up quite a bit when he heard that there is a writer in residence , whose sole function is to help patients get their words onto paper . I persuaded him to bring his book project with him and now he will have the chance to share it with a " professional " . Truly fantastic news ! The burden is no longer mine alone : ) We saw the Consultant , together with the fantastic MacMillan nurse . I told the stories of what had happened on Saturday and this morning and it all confirmed the decision to seek admission to the hospice . FL is now in full agreement with the plan . We discussed the possibility of him staying in the hospital while he waits , but the system is such that if he has a hospital bed he is no longer a priority . The MacMillan nurse said that in practice he has never known anyone make the transfer from hospital to hospice . Ah . So we are home again . The district nurse has rung to check up on us and to confirm that the night nurses will attend again tonight . I have their number to call for help if we have an emergency . As I write , FL is asleep with his head on the table . I need to light the log - burner and then go and make the bed . I bought another mattress protector in a flying visit to the supermarket on the way home . And another pair of pyjamas . A pair of district nurses came at 11am , took FL 's blood in readiness for tomorrow 's hospital appointment , and asked for the story of what had happened on Saturday night . They had a look around , to see how far FL has to walk to get to bed and bathroom and wondered about supplying a commode for the bedroom . . . ? But when they started to talk about installing a hospital bed I began to panic . They seemed to be saying that we could continue to manage on our own , that gradually he would spend more time in bed and that would make it easier in many ways . . . . ? I explained that there is only me and I can 't do it all on my own . I can 't cope on my own . And maybe that was the admission of defeat they were waiting for . Was it some sort of a test ? I don 't know . But by the time they left , they said they would be recommending to the GP that a place be found for FL in a hospice or the acute ward of the hospital . She said that was not her role : that this was what the GP was supposed to do . The polite version of what I said in reply was that he had not demonstrated such skills thus far . I told her that he had not returned phone calls I had made to the surgery , that he had only met FL on one occasion , so had no way of assessing how he is now compared to how he had been until maybe 3 weeks ago , and that I had not been impressed by the said GP 's professionalism on the night of his only visit ( the detail of which is not for blogging , but which I shared with her ) . Her eyebrows shot up and she declined to comment but agreed that it did not sound as if the GP had been of much assistance in progressing FL 's care . She was concerned that nobody had asked to test his urine despite me reporting to the district nurses that he had not been able to pee for 24 hours and had then produced scarily dark liquid . At the very least she thought he might have a UTI , but equally likely it could be evidence of his kidneys shutting down . She was appeased by his report of " ordinary " pee this morning . . . but nevertheless . . . The ridiculous irony of all this was that FL was completely engaged with the conversation . Positively perky . And this made it very difficult to communicate that just two days ago he was incoherent and confused and unable to stand up . That he had been so sleepy that he had let pills dissolve in his mouth , unable to swallow . I tried to explain that he spends 22 out of every 24 hours asleep and that I never know how he is going to be when he wakes up - perfectly fine , or totally out of touch with the world . She frowned , as if she didn 't believe me . And I can understand why - he was presenting as a perfectly normal , if somewhat frail elderly man , who had maybe had a bug over the weekend . She said she did not see why the hospice had been suggested : it is for assessment of people with symptoms that suggest they are near the end of their lives , which was clearly not the case or the GP would be aware . . . ? I pointed out that the GP had only met FL once , so how could he possibly make any sort of assessment of FL 's health ? And that the Consultant at the hospital , who has known FL for 8 years , was the one who proposed the hospice and had made a referral last Tuesday because she recognised the change in him and his rapid decline . That this was not my idea ! I eventually managed to tuck his chin over my shoulder to lift him and we shuffled towards the bathroom . However , he was falling asleep as we " danced " . I had to concentrate really hard to keep him upright while negotiating doors and light switches . By 10pm I was getting desperate . I managed to rouse him enough to take most of his pills . I didn 't attempt the bone - strengtheners as there are four of them and they felt like a bit of a luxury when he was struggling to swallow his morphine . I tucked my arms under his , with his chin on my shoulder and slowly stood up . He was trying to help me , but his legs just kept giving way . We were almost upright , when he lurched back down towards his chair , but he was too far from the edge and he and the cushions slid unceremoniously onto the floor in a heap , taking the telephone , his radio and a glass of water with him on the way down . We have neighbours , but we are not on particularly good terms with any of them . I was considering trying the middle ones , who are the most human , when I remembered that there were no cars outside . They had all taken the opportunity to get out while the roads were clear : the nearest set is pregnant , the middle set work shifts , and the furthest away one is not to be spoken of . It took forever to get through , and then another forever for the operator to find FL on the system . It would appear that the " new " GP is not yet fully functioning despite taking over FL 's practice in October . The operator eventually managed to identify FL as a " palliative patient " and said she would try to contact Marie Curie for assistance . However , it was the local district nurse service that rang back . They were quite reluctant to come out - did we not have friends or family ? Were we really completely alone ? ! It took them almost an hour to find us . I had explained the need to ignore the Road Closed sign , but the nurse was not impressed that this meant she had to drive through some shallow water to reach us . I had assumed they would have a " proper " car , if their job involved driving through Aberdeenshire in winter in the dead of night , but it was no better than mine ( a small hatchback ) . So they each took and arm and escorted him to the bathroom . I said he had not managed a pee since the morning and they agreed that was not good . But he still failed to perform . Their mobile phones had not stopped ringing since they arrived and it was clear that he was not the only elderly patient to fall that night . So after a short pause it was agreed he would just have to go to bed without passing water . Last night , rainwater started to pour through the kitchen skylight . The seal is dodgy and has been for years , but it usually only gives way when the snow starts to thaw . It is one of those things I need to take control of and get fixed . . . but it wasn 't going to happen at 10pm , so I stuck a sheep - feed bucket underneath , draped the French dresser with bin bags , and went to the bedroom to fetch FL 's hot water bottle . Ah . The small puddle by the east - facing wall had turned into a big pond which stretched from the fireplace to the door . I had to divert FL from his bed - wards stagger while I mopped it up . It took me the best part of an hour . I built a dam of towels round the affected area and escorted him through the shallows to the bed , which is at the other end of the room and therefore safe and dry . I had an hour - long circular detour yesterday , driving to the nearest town on a drugs run . It soon became apparent that I was not going to the market town after all , as every road in that direction was resolutely Closed due to flooding . During my final Diversion I encountered a spring bubbling up in the middle of the road and a group of frantic farmers trying to divert the water using diggers . I had to drive in entirely the opposite direction , towards the city , to get FL his painkillers . On the way back , I realised the farm is almost cut off on the city side too . Time to buy a tractor ? ! FL is going steady . We have settled into a pattern of getting up late , having breakfast together , and then him sleeping until dinner , when he will maybe eat a mouthful or two , take his pills , and go back to sleep again . The tricky bit is waking him out of that sleep to go to bed a couple of hours later . He complains I try to do it too quickly , but even so it takes me an hour or so of gentle coaxing before desperation makes me frogmarch him to bed , via the toilet . I have been granted compassionate leave for the remains of this week , on the understanding that I will update The Boss with the result of the various visitations planned for tomorrow : the Community Alarm people , the local MacMillan Nurse , and the District Nurse are all due to visit . But I can 't help thinking none of these will provide an immediate solution that allows me to go to the office on Monday . We have yet to hear from the hospice . Hopefully tomorrow . I think they will be key . I cannot imagine trying to tend to FL 's physical care in this cold wet draughty house when his condition deteriorates . I will make sure everyone understands that . FL himself is reaching that conclusion , which is half the battle . This is my third Qwist Hat . The first was knit out of Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop and was a present for my dear friend in Glasgow , Christine . I sent her an optional grey fluffy pompom , which she sewed on herself . Oh - and thank you for all those amazing reading recommendations ! I have joined an orderly queue at the library for most of them . Hopefully the roads will have been drained by the time it 's my turn ! We were at the hospital at 10 . 30 , having overslept til 8am , after a pain - filled night . I then had the dog to walk before we set off . There were several floods to drive through on the way . At 11 . 45 , a nurse appeared and woke him up - she was from " upstairs " where they had been waiting all morning to give him a blood transfusion , but they couldn 't go ahead without another blood test today and it was now too late for that to be done . I knew nothing about " upstairs " as we had been told to come to the clinic as usual . The nurse went off to find out what to do next . She asked how he had been since leaving hospital and I told her the highlights . She tried to engage him , but even once his hearing aid was in , he was struggling to keep up with the conversation . I explained that he was asleep for about 22 out of every 24 hours and that I had even tried withholding top - up painkillers in an attempt to keep him awake long enough to take his pills and eat breakfast - he hasn 't eaten a proper meal for days . He can 't bend his feet to get his trousers off and on . He can no longer stand upright . He can only walk with the support of my arm / the wall . The Consultant explained that she has stopped monitoring his myeloma because it is no longer relevant . The only thing they can really offer is pain relief , and when the myeloma begins to upset his kidneys it will have to be something other than morphine . He may find blood transfusions helpful in future , but his haemoglobin is at an acceptable level without one this week . ( Phew ! ) She said to him that she needed to discuss with us whether home is the right place for him now . . . He heard that alright and was very abrupt with her . He said he didn 't want to go to the hospice . She asked why not . He said it was somewhere that people went and didn 't come out again . She smiled and said that this was not the function of the place : it was somewhere that people who are already terminally ill go to be cared for in an appropriate way , where people understand their needs and are professional palliative carers . " So are you telling me that I am in that state ? " She asked me what my situation is as regards work and I explained that I was due to talk to The Boss tomorrow . She proposed getting the MacMillan nurse to investigate outpatient support from the hospice , and to involve the GP . I explained that the GP had not followed through with his promise of support once FL came home from hospital and had not returned phone calls . The holiday period was obviously a factor in this , but nevertheless . . . I also told her that Social Services has offered an alarm pendant and " possibly " help with a wash once a week . She was surprised that this was all that had been suggested . She asked if we had been offered a wheelchair so he could get out and about ? No . FL bristled at the idea of a wheelchair and said he was disappointed that nobody had suggested a physiotherapist to help him get his strength back . It was clear that FL was upset by the conversation , so we took him back to the waiting room and then went to find the MacMillan nurse . The nurse has undertaken to speed up a hospice outpatient appointment on the back of a referral from the Consultant ( to be made today ) , liaise with the GP , and investigate whether the local hospital could offer anything along the same lines as the hospice , if only to let me get to work / some respite for a few hours a week . We agreed I would report back once I had been able to talk to The Boss . A bit tearful , but in some ways relieved that it has been properly spelled out that this is IT . Nobody can tell us how long it will take , but he is dying . Deep breath . He has been asleep since we got home . And that is the problem at the heart of the situation right now . He is not really " present " any longer . If I was his daughter and not his wife , perhaps I could cheerily deliver him to the nearest care facility , whether he wanted it or not , and carry on with my life . But it 's not like that . He is still my First Love . We have history . He is The One . So I have to knuckle down and do the best I can for him in his final days / weeks / months . And he is still a proud man - he is having no truck with wheelchairs or walking sticks or elevated plastic toilet seats or being helped to wash . He would just rather not . Which is only fine up to a point . Sometimes I have to just make the decision and follow it through , for both of our sakes . This is a blog post that I believe needs to be written because there are other carers out there with as little idea as me of what it is actually means to care for their dying husband . Nobody tells you . The only information on " end stage myeloma " I can find from UK - based health websites just tries to tell me that everything will be alright : there are support networks and people who care and they will take over and you will not have to worry . Um no . . . not exactly . Let me tell you now : it is pretty much like having a new born baby but in reverse : no sleep unless the child sleeps , feeding , toileting , washing , and never leaving the infant unattended . And however much you love that child , it is hard work and it is exhausting . And unlike having a baby , which grows up and becomes more able to do things for itself , the more time goes on the less your husband will be able to do for himself . Your life will be consumed by caring for the other person , with no possibility of a positive outcome . And that is why I write this down . And why I indulge myself in crafty pursuits . And why I make lists of books I want to read and why I buy myself a new raincoat and wellies . I am shoring myself up against the incoming storm that WILL wipe away the life we have built together . And if you don 't want to read about that , please just stay away from this little space of mine . It 's for the best . Thank you . |
He didn 't have the most normal reaction one expected at the loss of a parent . There were no tears , there was no grief . If I were to identify with the one emotion that he displayed it could perhaps be cataloged as relief . The kind of relief one experiences when a great and terrible burden has been lifted . Then again , he wasn 't the most normal person , how many people you know would list a bullet proof jacket as their ideal gift ? Sameer was , for lack of a better word , unique . We first met as toddlers in the playgroup in our neighbourhood . All the other children would be kicking and screaming all over the place ( yours truly included ) he would just sit down in a corner with six blocks of " 1 , 2 , 3 " and ABC . He would build two perfect towers one - one for the alphabet and one for numbers , both towers would be perfectly straight with one plastic cube perfectly placed on top of the other . After admiring his work for a minute of two , he would bring the tower down and start the whole process again . Sameer lived at home with his parents , his uncle and his uncle 's wife his father 's only brother . Growing up , we were not financially comfortable , our living quarters were cramped and the occasional meal would be skipped but the sense of community made life a lot more easier . There was a principal of fairness instilled in us from the very first day of education . Whatever we brought from home would be pooled in to one huge communal meal . Sameer never brought any lunch throughout our schooling life . Sometimes , I gave him my lunches so that he could share it with the class as his . That 's how our friendship started . The computer systems donated were ancient , dusty , huge and heavy . They had been in a corner of a warehouse gathering dust for god knows how long . Just opening the flap of the box released a puff of dust in our faces . The students of the 8th grade had been instructed to assist the teachers in assembling the computer systems . No one in our school knew anything about computers , but Sameer volunteered to assemble them . Sameer and I stayed back after school to assemble our school 's computer lab which was basically made up of five broken tables pushed together a long extension board which Sameer fashioned from loose sockets , switches and floor boards . He worked very methodically but there was a touch of elegance to his work which made it seem like an artist was working . After 5 hours of tedious labour , we finally managed to turn on the computers , I think it was in that time that our friendship bond really strengthened . That day we opened up to each other about our dreams . We asked each other what we wanted from our lives . I said that I wanted money , success , comfort and luxury , Sameer on the other hand after some hesitation muttered - " Peace " . After the aforementioned fall where Sameer and his mother got injured , he complained to me about too many rats in his house . I suggested he get some rat poison from the hardware store around the corner . At the store , Sameer discussed his rat problem and asked for some potent rat poison . When the shopkeeper asked him how much he needed , Sameer replied " Enough to kill a rat no matter how big the bastard is " We took the poison to his house and grinded the small squares into fine white powder and placed it on his center table . We clearly labelled it " Rat Poison " . " Help me tidy up , we 'll be having a lot of visitors soon " he requested picking up shards of glass with his hands . I spotted a small translucent bag sealed lying on top of the sideboard with the sofa . Sameer picked up a similar bag from the center table marked " RAT POISON " , resealed it and placed in his pocket . The sun was at its hottest when he reached home from school . Upon entering the house , he felt his mother 's face light up at his sight . She smiled and said wash up and change your clothes , I will bring your lunch . He asked his mother if everything was alright ? She said guests had come over today which is why she cooked so much . He asked his mother to eat with him . She said she already ate with the guests and was completely full . " Eat up the food is getting cold . " His mother told him lovingly as she left for the kitchen to tidy up . He used to detest lunch everyday , but today his favorites were on the table and he quickly gobbled up his food . When I was younger , I had very weak eyes . No one in my family wore glasses . On top of that , my eyesight was constantly weakening . I had regressed from - 4 to - 10 in a span of 6 months . My birthday present when I turns six was a bottle of Vitamin C tablets . The odd thing was that I did not indulge in any activities that stressed my eyes . I did not even watch tv . We were not really well off , my father worked as a foreman in a factory , barely making ends meet . We were able to make ends meet only after my mother 's income , which she used just to pay the rent . After quick breakfast of tea and a small piece of flatbread , father left everyday at 7am to the bus stop with last night 's leftovers packed as his lunch . He came back around 9 at night , eat dinner and then chat with me for a while and then go to sleep . Even after more than 30 years I vividly remember all details of my first time on the top of the hill . An ancient truck was making its way into the city of Karachi . We were perched on two flat rocks my father and I , it was surprisingly cool to sit on . We sat there just watching the sun rise and just talking . My father never looked at me when we were talking , and he told me to look ahead after taking off my spectacles , which was odd , as I could only make out shapes without them , and watch the sun rise . He was right , it was a most magnificent sight , seeing night turn into day . However , not wearing glasses meant that I only got a blurred view of the magnificent sight in front of me . I stared in front chatting with my dad till I couldn 't see due to the sun in my eyes . Finally the heat and sun light became too much and I said " Can we go ? I have sun in my eyes ! " We made our way down the hill and came back every day for the next year . I began to look forward to these trips , making idle conversation with my dad . The calmest time of the day in a busy city like Karachi and the beautiful sight from the top of the hill . Everyday we went to the hill and just talked . Each day we only got up when I said that I have sun in my eyes . My vision began to gradually improve until after one year I didn 't need my glasses . That last day promised myself that today I won 't say that I have sun in my eyes . After watching the sun rise , my dad and I kept talking and he told me how a friend told him to try this sun rise treatment and how worried he was about my eyes . He kept talking and then stopped , " Asad , you 're not getting any sun in your eyes today ? " " How can I when I can 't see it ? " my father looked at me to see that I was facing the other way and laughed . He ruffled my hair and said " Fine , I will say it this time . Lets go , I have sun in my eyes ! " we got up and made our way back home . I was always this protective because that I was brought up . Since cable television because common , visual horrors and obscenities increased tenfold . The first thing I did was cut off television in my house . Sounds strange , doesn 't it ? But it was necessary to protect my family from getting their minds corrupted . My kids were taunted in school for their ignorance for their lack of TV time ; I didn 't care about my kids ' social standing with other kids as I was doing my job . Music was allowed in my house and initially so was radio , but it gradually phased out after we got a computer . Radio was only allowed to be used under my supervision at the prescribed times between 7 - 9 pm . There was also a collection of a few music cassettes and a few audio stories which were of course my choice . One day , my son asked me to buy a computer as he needed to learn it for school . Protective as I was of my family , I wasn 't one to stand in the way of progress and learning . So , we got a computer . I allowed them to use it under my supervision . The children wanted to play games again my protective instinct limited the types of games they could play to only sports and those games which were of the learning nature . Strategy and shooting games were not allowed . My kids , it appeared , had never been happier . They would take turns of thirty minutes each on the computer . It was a win - win situation , they had something that helped them fit in with other kids and I was also happy that they weren 't exposed to any violence , vulgarity or any other sort of evil . Then came the internet and my son asked me to get a connection . I had heard from my colleagues about this internet . Internet was amazing , they said ; imagine accessing the whole from the comfort of your home . It couldn 't be as good as they said , my gut said there was something wrong with it . I asked around if someone knew about the drawbacks of the internet , which I could use as a basis to dissuade my children . Unfortunately , none of my acquaintances had any arguments for this . One of my friends suggested searching on the internet for its weaknesses . I scoffed at the idea , that anything would tell its own drawbacks , however , since there were no other sources from which I could obtain this information , so I thought why the hell not ? My friend invited me over to his house one day to show me what the internet does . I was intrigued by it especially when it revealed its disadvantages itself . My friend was patient enough to clarify any misconceptions I had about the ' net ' as he referred to it . There was this thing called yahoo , it was a called a search engine . You could type in anything that you wanted and find it . It was like a virtual encyclopedia , it had the answer to everything . I again imposed the condition that it could only be used under my supervision . After the introduction of the internet in my house , I noticed gradual changes in my three children . They were more knowledgeable , confident and in general more sure of themselves . When my eldest son turned 16 , and was about to start his last year in school , he approached me with a proposal to get a faster internet package and why he should be allowed to use the computer more . As I mentioned before that I didn 't know much about computers , so I didn 't understand most of his reasons as they involved a lot of technical jargon . The manner in which he presented his case impressed me ; I reasoned with myself that if limited computer time has that much impact the effects of unlimited internet and more computer time would be massive . Shortly afterwards work commitments made my work hours much longer and as a result my children 's computer time suffered a lot . After a week or so of this , I changed my supervision policy a little ; I delegated the task of supervision to my wife and my elder son . Given the level of maturity he had been showing lately , I decided that his computer time did not need to be supervised anymore . I also started to pick up a few basics of the computer and the internet or the ' web ' as my children called it . They taught me that instead of typing up then name of any website I frequently visited I could simply go in history and click on the link again . I found that usually after every time my elder son used the computer the browser history would be wiped clean . I inquired about this from my son and he told me that sometimes having too much history saved on the computer 's memory can slow down the computer 's performance . The answer seemed satisfactory enough and I didn 't probe any further into this matter . Come to think of it , maybe I should have , perhaps I could have prevented my children from descending into the abyss of vulgarity which I discovered a while later . My children had again begun to change . My younger son had started to become more ill - mannered , he had started to talk back at his mother and his siblings . My wife also told me that he had even begun to swear when conversing with friends or siblings . My daughter had also changed ; she was now more cheerful and upbeat . She was apparently listening to more music as she was always humming to some new tune . She told me that her friend had a good music collection and that she had loaned my daughter a small contraption called an ' mp3 player ' which could store hundreds of songs . I could feel things slipping out of my control ; at least my eldest child was away from it all . He was always so busy at the computer , I usually found him staring at the screen and when I would go near the computer to see what he was seeing , it was usually either the desktop screen or the document typing software called ' MS Word ' . I let these things go , as I guess , this was just part of my children growing up . Protective as I was ; I just couldn 't completely let this go . Consciously I had made an effort to let it all go , however , subconsciously ; I guess I was noting it all . Finally then there was the incident which ultimately became the straw that broke the camel 's back . It was after dinner time , somewhere around 11 , if I remember correctly , I found my son at his now customary perch in front of the computer . As he saw me coming , my son pressed a few keys on the computer and by the time that I reached him , he was staring at the blank screen and was wearing a slightly guilty expression on his face . It was a combination of pursed lips and a determination not to look me in the eye as I approached him . The expression aroused my curiosity , so I sat down with him . I noted that a few windows had been minimized . I asked him to open all the windows . With slightly trembling fingers , he clicked on the minimized tabs one by one . The first one was the internet browser , the second one was a report he was typing on Word and the last window was of the media player . There was something playing on it and it was paused . I asked my son what it was , he told me it was an animated movie ; I nodded at him to play it . The animation was different , it wasn 't the Technicolor animation that I was used to ; it was different , almost lifelike . I really marveled at the progress in technology . The media player was showing that ' Shrek ' was playing . It was pretty decent for the first 20 minutes or so , a talking donkey , a lonely ogre and a princess . After that I was appalled at how much vulgarity they managed to sneak in a kid 's movie . Three things in the movie really threw me off . That night I could not sleep , I spent the whole night tossing and turning , thinking how I had failed as a father . How despite taking all possible precautions did I fail to protect my children from the vulgarities , the evils of the world ? I knew then that I had to do something drastic to protect the innocence of my children . What I did next was not insane , quite the opposite , it was an act of extreme love . It was a very difficult decision to make ; in fact I must confess here it was the hardest decision that I have ever had to make . In retrospect I still stand by my decision and given the chance to do it again , I would probably make the same call . I must stress again upon the fact , that I never was or have been at any point in my life , insane nor did I ever pose a threat to the society ever . I have never been violent to anyone nor have I tortured anyone . If you examine how meticulously I planned out my decision , I daresay you might find flashes of genius in my acts but not a shred of insanity . First I needed some time off from work for 3 days so I could research and get supplies . I spent the first day getting surgical supplies , researching online and most important of all , getting 2 key components of my plan - chloroform and anesthesia . I surprised my wife with a 3 day trip to her parents ' house up country . She had been dropping hints for quite a while , so understandably , she was quite delighted at my surprise . After dropping her off at the airport , I grabbed the rest of the supplies from office on the way to my house . I left everything in the car except the chloroform and cotton gauze , which I managed to sneak into the house . That night my son told me that he had brought another animated movie and this time all 3 of them would be watching it and I was welcome to join them . I politely declined their request stating that I had work to do . This was true as I had to bring in the supplies from the car and set up in the basement . That night around 2 am when I was sure that all my children were asleep , I soaked a wad of gauze in chloroform and placed on the face of all my children so they were knocked out . I checked this by shaking them vigorously after I presumably knocked them out . I then carried each of them down to the game room in our basement where I had moved a lot of things and set up my equipment there . The floor was carpeted and I also brought some blankets and pillows for all three as I lay them down side by side . I handcuffed each of them . Each handcuff was linked to an individual steel chain used for towing vehicles . The chains were around 6 feet long and the end of each chain was linked to the end of the old grill of the basement window . The children were really out of it , they didn 't wake up till noon . I had prepared a little snack for them . It was really fascinating to gauge the reaction of my children to their predicament . My eldest son was the first one to get up ; he was puzzled at first , as he recognized his surroundings , he grew somewhat calm . The discovery that his hands were chained made him anxious and that anxiety turned to fear when our eyes met . My daughter had the same puzzled look initially , but when our eyes met , there was no fear or even anxiety for that matter . All I could see in her cold grey eyes was defiance . This was something unexpected ; I never took my daughter to be the rebellious kind or even have the mental strength to hold her own strange situations . The most heart breaking of the reactions were from my youngest one . He stretched and felt the handcuffs , he yelled out " Fuck ! " just like that . He then opened his eyes and saw his siblings also chained . He tried to yank himself free unsuccessfully . He then tried to squeeze his hands out of the handcuffs , he was again , unsuccessful . Realising that his exertions were useless and that he was trapped ; the color left his face and his brow furrowed . Then our eyes met , his lower li began o quiver and his eyes began to well up . He started bawling like a new born baby has fat dollops dropped on his cheeks from his amber eyes and slid down his cheek . He cried so much that his nose started running and he threw up a little as well . It broke my heart to see my son crying like that . Granted I was not the most affectionate father in the world , but I was still a father , and it pained me to see my own flesh and blood so upset . I gently wiped my son 's tears away and comforted him so he quietened down a bit . The only sounds in the basement were his occasional sobs and the clanking of chains as he wiped his face clean . All through this little episode , my other two children were silent and did not move . Apparently they did not care for their sibling - another reason to go ahead with my decision . " I 'm not going to lie to you , this is going to hurt . I will try to be as gentle as possible . You know what they say , short term pain for long term gain . " As I said this , I reached for the bottle of local anesthetic and placed it in front of me . There was complete silence in the room as six eyes focused on me as I unpacked the supplies which I had procured over the course of the last two days . I placed the bottle of antiseptic next to the anesthetic along with a few packets of syringes and big khaki paper bag containing cotton swabs , crepe bandages and gauze . I filled up three syringes with anesthesia and began speaking , my focus again on the grills of the basement . " I 'm going to inject you each with anesthesia and while it takes effect , we will take the bathroom break I mentioned before and then I will explain to you what I 'm going to do . " As I said I pulled my younger son close to me and said as gently as I could " Open your mouth and stick out your tongue . " He again started sobbing and mumbled incoherent apologies . I brushed the hair out of is eyes and repeated myself in the same gentle tone as before . He timidly stuck out his tongue , I gripped his face from the side in such a way that my fingers were on the nape of his neck and my palm was on his cheek . I couldn 't inject on the first attempt as his constant sobbing made his face wet and consequently very hard to grip . I managed to do it on the second attempt . " I don 't think that anyone 's interested in going to the bathroom . We want to know why we are here . " He demanded , looking me in the eye . This was a real watershed moment for me ; one I hoped would have occurred earlier - my elder son taking charge , becoming his own man . It was a real bittersweet moment for me , on the one hand I was lucky enough to witness my son coming into his own as a man . On the other hand it was also appalling the way he was disrespecting me , disregarding everything I had taught him about the etiquette of addressing his elders . The other children were quiet and I could feel three pairs of eyes staring at me . Slightly taken aback by the outburst , I took a few moments to compose myself . I sighed and started to speak . I speak as slowly and as clearly as I possibly could . I focused on putting the scalpel in the sterliser as I spoke . I was extra careful in my pronunciation , I was very conscious of what words left my mouth , weighing up each syllable carefully before speaking it . It was very important that my concerns were conveyed to my children exactly as I perceived them . " Evil interacts with us in many ways . Sometimes through the deeds of others , other times through the deeds of our own or by chance . We can 't control how evil interacts with us through the deeds of others , however , we can control the other two ways , " I paused and looked up from the sterilizer , which was now filled with stainless steel scalpels of all sizes ranging from the tip the size of a ball point pen to the size of a butter knife , to check the reaction of my children . Their faces were impassive with furrowed brows betraying anxiety and furtive glances between the little surgical setup I had made in the basement and me . I paused to gather my thoughts and continued " We interact with evil primarily through three of our major senses - we speak evil , we see evil and we hear evil . " My younger son 's eyes started to grow misty again , I chose to ignore this and continued " Now , I 'm not heartless enough to keep you tied you up in this basement for the rest of your life or make you deaf and dumb for that matter , I will just be minimizing the impact of certain senses which you are most likely to use when committing evil . Please believe me when I say that I have thought long and hard about this . It is not an act out of spite ; it 's a very rational decision and the most difficult one I have had to make in my entire life . " My voice cracked , I felt my lower lip quiver , my eyes misted briefly as I felt a warmth slide down my cheek . I had forgotten how it felt when a person cries , it was the first time I cried since my childhood . I wiped the tear , closed my eyes and took a deep breath . The room was completely silent except for the sounds of my breathing and whimpers . I opened my eyes to see all three sobbing . I took another deep breath and asked my youngest son " Can you feel your tongue ? " He nodded . I again injected his tongue and took the plates of breakfast up to the kitchen . When I returned , I signaled my son to come forward . I placed two pieces of gauze on both his eyes and wrapped crepe bandage around his head . He couldn 't see anything through this make shift blindfold . " I 'm sorry , I 'll be better , I promise " he started trembling again . I knelt down but I couldn 't find the right angle to make the cut . I placed a couple of pillows on top of each other and placed his head on it . He started sobbing again ; I shushed him and held his head steady with one hand whilst holding the scalpel in the other hand . I couldn 't get a firm grip as the bandage was pretty damp from his tears . My hand started shaking as my son finally managed to stop sobbing and stuck out his tongue . I composed myself again - I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply . I dried his temple with gauze so I could get a better grip on his head . His eyes were shut tight in anticipation of a lot of pain ; they were shut so tight that his upper lip was dragged up exposing his gums . I placed the scalpel on his tongue and pressed the sharp edge on the tip . The saliva caused the scalpel to slip , so I used gauze to dry out his mouth by placing small gauze balls in his mouth to absorb new saliva generated by the glands . I gripped the scalpel more firmly and pressed the scalpel on his tongue ; this time I was successful in making the incision , the cut was pretty shallow , but I still managed to draw some blood . A thin sheen of blood appeared on his tongue , I had forgotten how queasy blood made me . I leaned back to gather myself again . I saw my daughter look at the bloody tongue of her brother and she let out an ear piercing scream . I raised my hand to silence her . What happened next probably took place in under a minute , but every time I go over the events I 'm about to describe next , it seems so much longer . I felt something cool pressing against my throat . " The keys " he hissed in my ear , his voice was dangerously low . His tone was very threatening " the only thing evil in my world … is you ! Now give me the damn keys before I put a stop to the only evil in my life , " he paused as he tightened the chain on my Adam 's apple constricting my windpipe , " permanently " " Okay , okay , " I gave in as I rummaged my pocket for the keys . I tossed them the whole bunch on to the carpeted floor . My daughter picked it up an unlocked herself and her siblings as well as the padlocks on all the chains . We all watched her in silence as the grip on my throat loosened slightly . " Now " he said in that dangerous tone again tightening the chain on my throat , although his wrists were now free , he was still maintaining his grip on my neck with the linking chain . I was then cuffed and chained in a more restricting way than I had bound my children . All my limbs were cuffed and tied to the basement window . What happened next is quite a blur , as I was shifted to a medical facility immediately afterward and spent a lot of time heavily sedated . There are a few recurring flashes of the tear filled face of my wife , a court hearing and the judge 's condescending look . I 'm not sure whether they are hallucinations , memories or just recurring nightmares . Sohail was sitting in his chair , waiting for the people to arrive so he could start the evening prayer . The call for prayer or the Azaan had been given . There were still five minutes left for the prayer to begin . The congregation for the evening prayers was usually small due to the fact that this particular mosque was located in a posh area . Evening time meant either family time for the older men and for the youngsters " koi scene banana " meaning a program to hang out and do nothing but chat about stupid random stuff while blowing away their parent 's money on Sheesha , cigarettes and fast food . Sohail had led the prayers in this mosque for 20 years , his father had worked on this mosque as a mason and had managed to persuade the mosque committee 's members to let Sohail lead the prayers for a period of 3 months while the existing Imam of the mosque took a vacation to his village . Sohail had made such a good impression on the committee members that they managed persuade the existing Imam , who was getting on in years to retire . At that time the area was not that well off , so the mosque was almost always packed at all five prayer times . When Sohail took charge , he managed to scrounge up enough donations to start a Madrassa - a centre for religious studies . Sohail glanced at the clock again , it was time to start . He surveyed the room , around 20 people , best count of the week . He was about to start when someone tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a piece of paper . The brother of the mosque committee head had passed away ; he was one of the few regulars who came five times a day without fail . Then again he was also unemployed and slightly mental . He had a very promising career as a lawyer , a brilliant lawyer , but a girl broke his heart and he just lost his mind . His older brother took care of him but just barely , that was because the younger son was the favourite and he had a lot of property named after him and the older brother inherited just the mosque and a house which he had to share with his brother . It was just a wrong decision because the older brother despite being the mosque committee head just came for the Friday prayers and even when he did he often smelled of booze , there was also a rumour that this man was also having an affair . Sohail had long since decided maybe that was the reason he was so irregular here , his habits did not let him stay in a state in which he could enter a mosque , sober and clean . Sohail started the prayer , but he was just going through the motions , he was leading a congregation , but that didn 't matter as he was very thrown off by the news . Every time he prostrated , Sohail prayed with all his heart that the bastard got what he deserved . As he finished the evening prayer , after reciting the last dua , he requested the members of the congregation to stay back for the funeral prayers . He quoted the Hadis of the Prophet relevant to funeral prayers . Of the mere 20 people , a few left , Sohail heard the hall door close and he addressed the people sitting on the rituals of the funeral prayer , when the door opened again and a strong smell of alcohol filled the room . It was extra strong tonight , he looked as if he was celebrating . Sohail got up from his chair and greeted the mosque committee head . " So sorry for your loss Sir . " He consoled his employer " More important than your brother ? Please Sir , I do request you , whatever it is , your brother is more important . You are his only family . " Beep ! Beep ! The alarm clock went off like a patient whose pulse is racing just before going into cardiac arrest . That 's the picture that popped into my head every single morning when my alarm went off . Too much House I guess . That 's how I start my day . Everyday is the same , get up , go for classes , and come back , rest . Watch some TV , study , argue with my mom that I am too tired to do anything else and then coax myself to sleep in the hope that tomorrow will be a better day . I used to think that I have been waiting in vain as I hope for something to break the monotony . The environment around me was too depressing - an over anxious mother , strict father and two highly irritable siblings who were just biding their time waiting to get out . My brother did find a way out ; he left the house immediately after finishing school . He was going to college in Lahore , on his own merit . My dad had to pay what was at that time considered normal tuition fee for schools , but this also included the boarding house . For me however , it was the same thing all my life over and over again , but today was different . Today I break the monotony once and for all . All these years of hard work were finally paying off . Today is going to be a new beginning . I am finally breaking the shackles - freeing myself from my strict father , my anxious mother . Today I was starting my first job - as an apprentice in a large accountancy firm . I am very happy . For the first time in my life , I can wear a tie and not be scolded for it . I am on the way to becoming my own man . I smile at my reflection in the mirror , ties looked good on me . I go down stairs to see my mom up and about and my dad reading the morning paper . My mom was bustling around in the kitchen - her routine for the last thirty years . I greeted both of my parents good morning ; my dad acknowledged my greeting with a nod of his head and my mother responds with a knowing smile . It is big day for all of us ; I was finally breaking free of my father , another sign for him that his time is coming to an end . The atmosphere in the house today was slightly different ; it felt as if a war was over . To another person it might seem that it was just a normal family having breakfast , but it was something very different . There was a spring in my mom 's step , a victorious gleam in her eye and that smile of hers made her look much younger . My dad on the other hand looked slightly crest fallen as he knew that his time at the throne was coming to an end . Although he did not acknowledge it , but he liked being in charge , steering the ship or the king of his castle as he liked to put it . Even at the age of sixty , he after gaining a lot of weight and losing a lot of hair , the air of authority in his tone of conversation and the arrogance in his strut suggested that he was used to ordering every one about . However , slowly but surely he was losing his grip over all of us - his family . My brother as I mentioned before was the first to get away when he finished school , my sister was the next one when she got married a few years ago , and now , it was my turn to break free and spread my wings . For my mother , this was her dearest ambition - see us making our way into the world . It makes one think though , how quickly time passes . It seemed like yesterday when the house rang with the sound of laughter and arguments . How after getting scolded and at times caned by my dad , she would take me into a corner and comfort me . " Have patience son , your time will come , " She always used to say , " But remember when your time comes , don 't forget that you were also once weak and helpless , don 't exert your dominance on others like your father does . When he becomes old and weak never treat him the way he behaves but treat him the way I 've taught you how to treat others . " From the time I was around five years till last year , my mom kept on repeating this like a mantra , ' your time will come ' . Every night I would say this to myself and drift off to restless sleep . Now it looked as if my time had finally come . Maybe my mother was thinking the same thing , she used tell me what my father had said to her all those years ago : " you 're not good enough to raise my children " She used to say to us work hard and prove our father wrong . Today , her wish had come true , we had proven him wrong . Maybe she was thinking the same thing today when she smiled at me ; the worst was over , it was all better from here on . The future was bright . There are two types of powers found in the world - one is the power of science , the other is the power of love . The former can be easily explained and identified , but the power of love is something that people have discovered and identified for centuries , but no one can describe how it works . All the miracles we see today are in one way or another connected to love and / or faith in one way or another . We begin our story at the Aga Khan Hospital , the year was 2004 . My 5 year old niece Fatima was visiting the doctor after her finger tips and toes had turned blue in her Montessori . We were assured by relatives that we had nothing to worry about , but my brother was really worried so he and I took Fatima to the hospital . I was pretty sure that we had nothing to worry about . The doctor was a very pleasant person he had white hair with flecks of grey sprinkled all over his head , an army style moustache and rectangle glasses gave the impression of a learned person on the verge of retirement . His eyes were onyx black , and made him look younger than he was . We had brought the Ultra Sound and chest X - rays of Fatima , although we had spent most of today morning examining it but we couldn 't come to any conclusion except that the tests were expensive . " Good ! Can you at least shake my hand ? " the doctor asked her smiling . Again the shy smile , I remember thinking we should bring her here anytime we wanted peace and quiet . My niece extended her small hand into Dr . Shah 's hand when the hands parted the little hand was full of sweets and Fatima 's eyes widened in delight and all the shyness went out the window as she resumed being her normal bubbly 5 year old self . " Thank you , doctor uncle ! " She exclaimed and then looked over to my brother for permission to eat them ; he was very controlling when it came to sugar and caffeine consumption . A weary nod and a resigned smile was all he could muster , but even then he instructed her to deposit the rest of the sweets with me . " You are most welcome beta . " Dr Shah replied as he sat down to examine the reports , the pleasant expression was gradually replaced by a more concerned and grim look . Meanwhile , Fatima had busied herself in rearranging the good doctor 's table which involved basically picking anything up in her reach looking at it for a few seconds and placing it on another corner of the desk . All the while , I had a firm grip on her to prevent her from climbing on the table and causing real havoc . After a couple of minutes my brother finally had had enough and pried the name plate of the doctor bearing the legend " Dr . S . H . Shah " from Fatima 's hands and glared at me " Asad why don 't you say something to her ? Fatima beta , stop this please . " I was a bit disappointed that the entertainment had stopped , so I got up and took her hand and told Ali that we were getting something to drink . Dr . Shah smiled at her and told us to shut the door on the way out . Something was a little different in those eyes ; they were looking dim and sad . When we left the room , Fatima said that she didn 't want to drink anything but another sweet would be great . Fatima nodded her head and skipped all the way to the end of the hall and back . She stopped to look at the plants and examined the leaves . I leaned against the wall of Dr . Shah 's office to eavesdrop on their discussion . " I 'm afraid it 's too late . " Dr . Shah replied . There was a few moments ' silence , before Ali protested " There must be something you can do , this is Aga Khan can 't you put a laser or ultra something to help her ? " " No , sorry there 's nothing we can do . It 's too late for her " There was another silence which was interrupted by soft sobs and sniffles . I thought it was Ali crying but when I put my hand to my cheek , I found it that it was moist . " No , at the rate by which her symptoms have worsened I 'd say around 3 - 4 days " Again there was silence broken only by Ali 's sniffles and sighs . I felt something tugging my trousers , I looked down and saw that Fatima was tugging to get my attention , when she saw she had it , she asked innocently " Chachu , why are you crying ? Big boys don 't cry " She said using the same expression I had two years ago when her mother had passed away . " Legend has it that the mazaar of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar has a well on the way . If you make the journey from the well to the mazaar by foot , drinking the well water after making your wish at the mazaar makes it come true . I don 't know the details but I know this person who can guide you . " " After making your wish , put your head to the girl 's chest and listen to her heart . Right now there is an after beat , an echo if you like , we call it the murmur of the heart . When her heart heals , there will be no murmur " " Ok , thanks " I heard chairs moving which meant that Ali was getting up to leave . I looked around to find Fatima ; she was standing in front of me staring at me with those big black eyes I could never say no to . She was holding a can of mirinda in one hand and a bag of sweets in the other . She asked me slowly " Is it true Chachu ? " " Yes - but he is sending us to another doctor who will make you well again . " I explained hoping with all my heart that it would be true . The explanation satisfied her temporarily at least . I nodded my head and we left for Ali 's flat in the posh area of M . Ali society , he had been very thorough in searching for the perfect place to bring up a family . His wife Sara , had assisted him in searching for the perfect neighborhood and although the rent was a bit on the higher side , but it was worth it . I had moved in with Ali around a year before , I was single so I had no problems just picking my stuff up and moving in . Although he did not ask me , but I chipped in with half the rent and also took care of Fatima . As we turned into our apartment complex , the watch man gave us a smile and waved hello , he was greeted by two sober smiles , a nod and one lively smile accompanied by vigorously waving hand . " OK ! Are we going any place cold ? Do I need any warm clothes ? I don 't have any warm clothes ; can we go and buy some ? " I was bombarded by these and a million other questions as Ali left the room , presumably to make a phone call as he had his new Nokia 1100 out . Fatima 's demeanor was so much like her mother , even though she had barely turned three before her mother passed away , she was so much like Sara in everything she did . She had that infectious smile , the same frown that Sara had when she was thinking , she even had the same cheerful nature . The likeness was uncanny . Sara was always nice to me , she was like the sister I never had , I missed her so much and I can only imagine that Ali 's grief was ten times worse than mine . " The sufi guy whose number the doctor gave me has called us now to talk . He wants to see Fatima himself so he can tell us what to do . We have to do certain things during the trip which he can only explain in person . " Ali 's marriage was done in the traditional way , the elders of the house searching for the perfect girl to add to their family . The judges ( My mom , Khala and my Phuppo ) were undecided with the last two girls - Sara and another doctor girl , Ali had only glanced at Sara 's picture for a micro second and he said " I like her . " So Sara came into the family , she slotted in seamlessly in our family it was only then that I understood what match made in heaven meant . A year later Fatima was born and we were ecstatic , six months later Ali moved in here and all was perfect until one day … " Wow , papa two times in one day . Why are you letting Chachu drive our new car ? Aren 't you the one who 's always saying that even I could drive better than him ? " Fatima eyed me with a mischievous smile . " Did you remember to call Mishal to say thank you for the birthday present ? No ? I guess you only remember important things like cartoon network times or the number for KFC ? " The journey to the Sufi guy was pretty uneventful except for the fact that we stopped once to ask directions . When we reached the address , Ali got out and left Fatima and me in the car . I braced myself for a guy in green clothes , with a mass of tangled unwashed hair , a million beads around his neck and five rings on each finger . A middle aged man with graying hair and a short beard opened the door , there was no holiness look about him , and he was dressed in a plain white kurta shalwar . I assumed he was the assistant because he did not in any way look mullah babaish . I helped Fatima out and locked the car , checking the locks twice , with Fatima checking the locks again herself , satisfied ; she grabbed my hand and led me inside . The house was rather small , pretty much like our flat , but it felt more congested . I felt Fatima grip my hand a little tighter as we made our way through the narrow passage way leading inside the house . It looked like an ordinary enough house . No religious quotations were written anywhere , we took our slippers outside the door step before entering the room , I later found out it was only done because the house was carpeted . We found Ali sitting with the same man who had opened the gate ; I looked around expecting the holy man to pop inside anytime soon beads and all . I asked Ali " Is he the - you know ? " Fatima tentatively extended her hand , Ghulam placed his hands on hers closed his eyes , and when he removed his hands Fatima 's hands were again full of sweets , oddly enough they looked like the same sweets Dr . Shah had given her earlier in the day . The reaction was also the same , the wide grin and the chirpy ' thank you ' , Ghulam 's face grew serious and he began his explanation . He addressed Fatima first and said " I can make you well again , don 't worry beta , but you will have to do exactly as I say ok ? " " Now you spend the day completely with her , let her know you 're there for her . Hug her , kiss her , do anything and everything to show her your affection and after you have spent time which is equivalent to five time Namaz , you take her to the well on the way to Sehwan Sharif , draw the water from it . Stir the water seven times anticlockwise , say Bismillah and share the water with your daughter and who ever accompanies you on your journey and Inshallah , her heart will be whole again . " Fatima and Ali got in the back seat , with Fatima sitting behind me . She reminded me of the fact over and over again by punching and kneeing the back of the seat , now I knew why Ali was letting me drive . Fatima did this to almost anyone who drove when she did not get to sit in the front . Everyone was ecstatic after Fatima was born ; Sara named her after her mother as is the tradition in our family . Naming the girl is the responsibility of the mother of the child , but the son 's name is the responsibility of both the parents . So we named our Fatima binte Ali , which was done surprisingly quickly and without any hungama . Ali and Sara were really happy when Fatima was born and then searched for the perfect place to raise a family , as I mentioned before , they looked for the perfect place for at least a year before moving in . Ali was a partner in an accounting firm ; he was relatively well off , on top of that Sara also came from a financially sound back ground , consequently , money was no object . I was in college when Fatima was born and I used to tag along with Sara when she went apartment hunting Ali only saw four places which we had short listed from around 50 apartments . Ali could not have been happier , but one day when he came home and found Sara sitting in the drawing room massaging her temples . She complained of a head ache and took a couple of pills and fell asleep never to wake up again . Brain hemorrhage was the cause of death written on her death certificate . Ali was never the same again . Just then Fatima came with our ketchup and slid in beside me . She sipped her drink and then started her meal . On reaching home Fatima sank on the couch and exclaimed " I 'm tired ! " Ali and Fatima went to his room , Fatima switched on the TV and Ali went to change his clothes . I sat there on the sofa contemplating whether I should go in there or not . In a little while Fatima came out to call me " Beta , there won 't be much space on the bed . " I replied not wanting to intrude on Ali 's time alone with Fatima . They rarely got to spend time together . Fatima then said something that is kind of our family motto ; she said " There should only be room in the heart , other spaces you can make " When I went to Ali 's room I saw that Fatima was already asleep , I mouthed good night to Ali and then tried to sleep . I couldn 't sleep , there were so many emotions I was experiencing , I was restless , and I was helpless , finally after two hours of tossing and turning I got up to get something to drink and found Ali sitting on the kitchen table with a glass of water and a water bottle in front of him . The water was untouched . Ali nodded and he talked . We talked all night , he talked mostly and I listened . The upside of bad events is that it usually brings people closer , for Ali and I it was a first , we never really talked about anything really , but that night was the first time I really felt like we had connected , like we were brothers . We went to Jumbo , which was a super stores and they had a wide range of products from edibles to grocery stuff etc . Controlling Fatima in the store was always a difficult task and that day proved no different , heart condition or no heart condition , that girl was quick . She was literally , a kid in a candy store . Ali paid for the stuff as we made our way back to the car . Fatima skipped to the car but her limbs went stiff and she tripped . Luckily she was near the car so she steadied herself and didn 't fall face first on the asphalt . We drove in silence the whole way , Fatima was surprisingly quiet . The silence was not awkward , it was oddly comforting . We were alone with our thoughts but together at the same time , I guess at that point in time it was exactly what the doctor ordered . We stopped at a gas station in Hyderabad , to stretch our legs and fuel . Ali held Fatima 's hand all the time she was walking , following Ghulam Shabaz 's advice to the letter . After fifteen minutes we got back on the road , the atmosphere in the car was visibly more cheerful . Fatima was back to her chirpy self , commenting on everything we passed . She fell asleep in the afternoon , around four . We reached the well that Ghulam had mentioned at ten in the night . Surprisingly , the place was packed . Ali was staying in the car as I made my way to the well with a cooler I had brought from home . The well was the old style with a bucket and long rope , the kind we saw in the movies depicting villages and older times . I lowered the bucket as long as the rope would allow and I pulled it back up , but it was empty . The man smiled and said " No problem , " He then turned to the crowd and yelled " Naraa - e - Haaaideriiiii ! ! ! ! " Haider was a name by which the Holy Prophet referred to his cousin Ali . The man had yelled out to people to cry out the call of Haider . I dropped the bucket again and less than halfway , I heard a splash . I drew the bucket up and filled my cooler . I turned to thank the man who had helped me , but he was no longer there . I stirred it seven times anticlockwise , said Bismillah and blew on the water softly . I passed the glass to Ali , who made Fatima sit up to drink it . I switched on the car light to make it easier to drink it . Fatima was looking very pale ; she looked very different from the bouncy bubbly girl who was chatting with us in the afternoon . The water made a difference , some of the colour started to return to her face . She took another sip and remarked " This tastes like the water that grandfather had brought back from Saudi Arabia . " My father had gone on pilgrimage earlier in the year and he had brought back the holy water from Mecca . She handed Ali the glass , who sipped it and passed it to me . I took a sip and both of us nodded in agreement to Fatima . The holy water reportedly had healing powers , but how did we get it in a well in Pakistan ? I started the car and drove in silence for the next hour . We arrived at the shrine at midnight , Ali carried Fatima and I had the cooler of well water . We gave her the water again and Ali and I also took a sip of it . After muttering a small prayer , he asked me to check her heart beat . I knelt down and put my ear to her chest . I listened hard for a couple of minutes but fortunately , I did not hear a murmur . I looked at Ali and smiled who was looking quite anxious . On seeing me smiling he looked at me in disbelief and mouthed ' really ' . I nodded and he also confirmed the fact himself . We both started screaming and dancing , Fatima also joined us in our celebration . We seemed to have kicked started a party because suddenly someone started banging a catchy beat on the dhol , the traditional drum of Pakistan . People started dancing and shouting praise for Lal Shahbaz Qalandar the mystic at whose shrine we had come . Ali said " Come on , let 's go inside and say thanks " We went inside and said our thanks and offered gratitude prayers in the mosque . We read the inscription on the door of the tomb it read " Hazrat Laal Shahbaz Qalander born Syed Hussain Shah preached tolerance to the Hindus and the Muslims and was often found in the company of his loyal disciple named Ghulam Shahbaz or ' servant of Shahbaz ' because of his loyalty to Hazrat Qalandar . Legend has it that both of them still assist people in their lives appearing to them as normal people " We left for home and drove nonstop on the way back . We reached back home in the afternoon , we immediately called the Aga Khan Hospital to set up an appointment with Dr . Shah . We were told that no Dr . Shah worked there . We spent the next two months looking for Dr . Shah and Ghulam Shahbaz , but we never found out . Maybe they were really the mystic and his disciple , maybe they were not . I guess we will never know . We haven 't told anyone about this , but there is no other explanation for it all other than that it was a miracle . Never a day goes by that we aren 't grateful for our blessings . Every day is a gift , I guess that 's why they call it the present . |
A couple of things I wanted to write about : First , last Sunday we attempted to go to our new congregation for the first time . There were three different options : a 9 AM , an 11AM , and a 1PM . Being slightly lazy , we decided to try the 11AM and hope it was the right one . When we got there , I wondered why none of the women were sitting with their husbands , and why nobody had any kids . I thought there must be a lot of women with inactive husbands or something . Then , the person conducting the meeting stood up and welcomed us the the Young Single Adult Ward . Everything made since then , and we both thought it was really funny . We asked the ward clerk after the meeting which time we were supposed to come , and nobody could tell us . Fortunately , when we arrived home our real ward had left a flyer on our doorstep . It is the 9AM one , but they are switching to 1PM at the new year . I really wish we could have had 11 , but oh well . Second , earlier this week I arrived home and there were four ( completely unexpected ) enormous plastic bins sitting on our doorstep that had arrived in the mail . Since my mother - in - law has downsized to a smaller house and seems to be making a habit of vacationing over the holidays since she got remarried , she decided she didn 't need her Christmas decorations and sent them all to us . I wasn 't planning on decorating for Christmas this year at all , because we already have so much stuff to put away and organize , but her decorations made me happy . We aren 't going to keep all of them , but I have put up some of the things that I like . They make it feel more like Christmas , and I am grateful for that . Third , I started a new job today . Peter 's family runs a skin care company called MiraCell , and they have hired me as an executive assistant . I can already tell it will be a much better job than my current job . It will actually require that I use my brain , and I might even learn some new skills while I 'm at it . I 'm pretty excited to have a job that won 't be so monotonous . However , I will still be working for Trump UniPosted by We have our house ! We moved in the day before Thanksgiving , and then left for a long weekend in St . George , UT with some friends . It was really nice to have the break , but it was also a little bit overwhelming to come home to such a huge mess . We have spent as much time as we could since then unpacking , although we also had to spend quite a bit of time cleaning our old place and helping my father - in - law move , since he decided to move out when we did . My apologies that I have not taken pictures to post of our new house . Today is the first day where a few of the rooms actually look presentable enough to photograph , and I am too tired from unpacking all day long to take any right now . Just wanted to let you know we are in the new house , and everything is going great ! If you need our new address for any reason , leave me a message and I will email it to you . Pictures will be coming soon ! Seeing as how the month of November is more than halfway over , I thought it was time for an update . We are hoping to sign papers for our house on Monday or Tuesday of next week , and hoping to be able to move in on Saturday . We don 't know for sure if either of those things will happen , but we seem to be almost done with our house - buying adventure ! This evening through a small miracle we were able to get most of our things packed . I was feeling really overwhelmed before , but now the moving part of buying a house feels a lot more manageable . : - ) It is nice to have things out of the way , and to know that in our new house we will have more than enough space for everything that we own . Last Sunday we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Harris side of the family because Peter 's grandparents are going out of town for the real Thanksgiving . It worked out well for us because we are going to be out of town on the real Thanksgiving too , so we originally thought we would just miss out on it . And who could be oppposed to eating two delicious Thanksgiving dinners ? I think they will be spaced just far enough apart so that we don 't get tired of Thanksgiving foods . There 's your update ! This morning when I went out to my car , I discovered that it had been egged . I was pretty sad about it , because I think egging is just about the meanest prank you can do because it is so destructive . Of course , I had come outside with just barely enough time to get to work , so I had to leave the eggs on my car . And it snowed all day long today . I spent a lot of the day worrying that I had frozen eggs on my car and they would never , ever come off , but I decided to go to a car wash on my way home anyway . I work right next to Ikea , so I went to the Super Tunnel Car Wash that is also right next to Ikea , and the guy there was amazing . Even though , like I said , it was cold and snowy , he spent a long time scrubbing my car and getting all the egg crap off before he sent it through their washer . He was really happy and smiley and it just made my day . I was only sorry I didn 't have cash to tip him . So here is my tip instead . If you ever are in need of a car wash and happen to be by Draper , go to the Super Tunnel Car Wash ! This is me and my cousin Brig . He wasn 't too thrilled about having his picture taken , so this was the only one that we took . Today we had the opportunity to pick up my cousin Brigham from the airport and drop him off at the MTC . Unfortunately , I had to work and wasn 't able to hang out with him the whole time between when we picked him up and when Peter dropped him off . However , after I left he got to hang out with Sara and Peter at BYU where they enjoyed Jamba Juice and the BYU Museum of Art . When I got home from work this evening , I realized that his bag of toiletries was still in my car , so I got to go back to the MTC to drop them off for him . ( They said it wouldn 't be a problem . Apparently it happens all the time . ) Hopefully he didn 't forget anything else that he needs . So thanks Aunt Barb for letting us pick him up , and good luck Brig ! So since we 've been home , I have been sending out a few job applications here and there . I wasn 't looking too seriously for a job because I wanted to know where we were going to live so I could get something close since I wasn 't very optimistic about getting a job that I liked ( i . e . a museum job ) . One of the places I applied to called me in for an interview , and they liked me so much they offered me the job on the spot . It 's not the greatest job in the world , but it will be nice to have a paycheck . Today was my first day . I work in student services for Trump University , which is an online school that Donald Trump started so that other people can learn how to be rich like he is . I take calls from people who are registering for classes and events , and then I call people to remind them to come to the events they signed up for . This evening , we went to Sizzler for dinner and got steaks , because we got a coupon for them in the mail . My expectations were definitely exceeded . My steak was amazing , and their salad bar was really good too . Peter didn 't get so lucky with his steak , unfortunately . So Dad , next time you 're in town , we just might have you take us to Sizzler for steaks . : - ) Did I ever write on here that we had an offer accepted on a house ? I 'm not sure . Anyways , it is in Bountiful , but we 're running into all kinds of problems with it so we are still looking at other houses . It has been frustrating because we thought we were done and would be into our house by Halloween , and now we 'll probably have to rush to be into any house by the end of November . Oh well . Have you ever eaten / heard of quince ? It is a fruit kind of like an apple , but it isn 't juicy at all and it has a much denser texture . I heard of quince in a poem I read when I was a child called The Owl and the Pussy - Cat by Edward Lear . I have attached the poem for your reading pleasure . I never knew what a quince was , or how you ate it , so when I saw it at the grocery store I just had to buy one . It 's not my favorite , but it was fun to try ! The Owl and the Pussy - cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat , They took some honey , and plenty of money , Wrapped up in a five pound note . The Owl looked up to the stars above , And sang to a small guitar , ' O lovely Pussy ! O Pussy my love , What a beautiful Pussy you are , You are , You are ! What a beautiful Pussy you are ! ' Pussy said to the Owl , ' You elegant fowl ! How charmingly sweet you sing ! O let us be married ! too long we have tarried : But what shall we do for a ring ? ' They sailed away , for a year and a day , To the land where the Bong - tree growsAnd there in a wood a Piggy - wig stood With a ring at the end of his nose , His nose , His nose , With a ring at the end of his nose . ' Dear pig , are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring ? ' Said the Piggy , ' I will . ' So they took it away , and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill . They dined on mince , and slices of quince , Which they ate with a runcible spoon ; And hand in hand , on the edge of the sand , They danced by the light of the moon , The moon , The moon , They danced by the light of the moon . Here are some of our pictures from our trip . Locations include the Cape Coast , the rainforest , and Tamale . We have many more pictures , obviously , but here is a start . Things that are new with us since our last post : Peter has a job working in Salt Lake for the Venture Capital firm he worked for as an intern during college . We 're really grateful that things worked out there , and that he has a job that he loves . He started on September 1 . I am still looking for a job , and have applied to a few . Nothing promising yet . We are also looking to buy a house , and looking for houses is a lot more fun than looking for jobs ( guess which one occupies more of my time ) . We 'd like to be somewhere up by Salt Lake so Peter doesn 't have so far to commute . I went back to our ward here for the first time today . A lot of people are the same , and there are also a lot of new people . Apparently when you don 't go to church for 4 months , they take you off the roll and move your records into no man 's land . I was surprised by that , because our bishop was the one who gave us permission to do the sacrament and we were supposed to email him every week about it , as if we were still part of the ward . Oh well . Also , they called Peter to be an elder 's quorum teacher , replacing our friend Ian who just moved out of the ward ( and yes , they did tell him he was replacing someone who " moved without any warning " ) . So that 's our life right now . Things are getting into a routine , but we don 't quite feel at home since we are planning on moving soon . Sometime soon I will try to get the Africa pictures up so you can all look at them . After 25 long , long , long hours of travel we are finally home ! I will write more about the trip and our adventures during our last week later . I 'll just say that everything went smoothly and we were very grateful for that . Peter went to the hospital this morning to get checked out , and so far he looks okay . He has another appointment on Wednesday to make sure ; I guess they weren 't willing to do a lot because he didn 't have his treatment record , and the doctor was more worried about the malaria than the typhoid even though we are reasonably sure that all of Peter 's problems are coming from typhoid and NOT malaria . ( Last time he was tested in Ghana he did have typhoid , but no malaria . ) I am so incredibly grateful to live in the US . There are SO many blessings that we have because we live in this country , things that I totally took for granted before . I have been constantly finding new things to be grateful for during the 12 hours that I have been home . This woman was my favorite one in the competition , probably because she was the only woman competing ( which makes her awesome ! ) . Here she is kneeling to show respect to the chief before she begins to dance . A man spinning . The shirt he is wearing is the standard Dagbani - style men 's shirt , although it is bigger than any I have seen outside of the dance competition . I have also seen ( non - dancing ) men twirling their better - fitting shirts to show celebration . Gongong playersA couple of days ago , we were invited to attend a dance competition at the chief 's palace in Tamale . We found out about it right as we were leaving to take Peter to see another doctor , so we decided we would stop by for a few minutes before we left . Although I was expecting the dancing to be the key part of the competition , what I enjoyed most was the music . African drumming is absolutely incredible . I can 't really explain how it feels to listen to it live , so loud and totally engrossing . This group of men I 'm sure had never rehearsed , and yet their performance was flawless . They all started and stopped at the same time , their rhythms all matched perfectly , the single flute that played with them knew just when to start and stop . The drums that they hold under their arms are called gongongs , and they talk . Everyone ( well all Africans anyway ) understands what they say , and so the performance had lyrics even though it didn 't for us . I tried to ask somebody how you know what they say , but I think learning the drum language would be really difficult unless you were learning it from somebody who " speaks " it , not just who hears it . The dancing was actually not very impressive . Everybody got on the stage and did almost exactly the same steps . They would march around a little bit , and maybe twirl or whip their little fly whip . It got old pretty quickly . I found it much more interesting to look at the clothes they were wearing . They were all dressed as if they were chiefs with their wide twirly shirts , incredibly baggy pants , chief hats , etc . I have a bunch ofPosted by Peter has typhoid again . Or , I should say , he never got rid of it the first time , and on Monday his fever came back and he is sick again . We went to the doctor and they gave him more and different medicines , so we 're hoping this time they kill it for good . On our way to the hospital , I saw a woman riding a motorcycle with the full Islamic head covering - - no eyes visible . It was funny and slightly terrifying at the same time . I know there is some visibility through those cloths , but enough to safely navigate a motorcycle ? Also , I heard back from the museum I applied to and they do not want to interview me . I 'm a little sad , both because I wanted to go home early and I wanted the job , but it is also a good thing . Now we will almost definitely live in Salt Lake close to Peter 's job , and I 'm sure I will be able to find something close by so that neither one of us will have to commute . We have 18 days left in Ghana , and probably 12 - 14 days left in Tamale . We 're planning to spend our last few days as tourists on the coast , visiting the slave castles and the rainforest . I can 't wait to go home ! ! ! I thought I would start by telling you exactly how they put in my hair extensions , since a lot of people have asked me . They began by taking three clumps of synthetic hair - - one purple , one black , and one golden , and mixing the purple and the black together ( I know you could hardly tell when it was on my head , but there was purple in there ) . Then , they combed all of my hair into a ponytail on top of my head , which they fastened with a regular rubber band . That was the beginning of a LOT of pulling and tangling and general hair unpleasantness . They started at the nape of my neck , and combed little tiny pieces of hair out of the larger ponytail , and then mixed the gold - colored extension with my regular hair and twisted it around the black hair . So the golden colored hair you saw in the picture might have been mine , or might have been extension . They were pretty much exactly the same color , so it was hard to tell . When I took it out , it was REALLY hard to tell and it got all snarled and it was a huge , huge pain . They got it into some sort of knot at the top , but they didn 't do anything to fasten the bottoms . There were four girls working on my head most of the time . Two of them came up the back , and two came around my ears and up on the sides and then the front . The crown of my head was the last place to be done . To fasten the ends , they dipped my hair into a cup of boiling water ( and splashed some of it on my arms . Yay ! ) , which shrank the extension hair and molded it semi - permanently into the coil shape . The extensions ended about the same length as my regular hair , or a couple inches longer . I had the braids ( twists , really ) in my hair for 5 days . I was assured by several people that the first two days hurt a lot , and then after that you wouldn 't even know you had your hair braided . That was NOT my experience at all . The first day hurt a lot , and after that my scalp felt itchy all day long and then at night it was really painful . I think the itchiness was just the way the pain felt after it was somewhat deadened . AlPosted by Today I got my hair braided African - style . It hurt really bad , and it took a long time ( four hours , plus an hour waiting to get started ) but I really like it . I wish my skin color looked better with purple - black hair . What do you think ? Before we go to the saloon , an update . Peter was feeling really good the past couple of days , and then last night he started feeling really bad again . We 're not quite sure why , but today he is feeling okay again . I am still fine , and still don 't think I am likely to get typhoid . Thank you everyone for your prayers , and if you would continue to remember us we would really appreciate it . About a month ago , we had a sales campaign at a local church , and Peter was given the invitation you see above . Because the text is kind of hard to read and for some reason it won 't put it the right direction , here is what it says : LOVE AND CARE BEAUTY SALOON AND DECORIn the name of Allah most gracious , most merciful . The above mentioned salloon wish to invite the company of Alhaji , Hajia , Mr . & Mrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . to witness the passout ceremony , On its surface , this invitation is very confusing . To be invited to a Muslim saloon is interesting , because good Muslims do not drink alcohol . To witness a passout ceremony at a Muslim saloon must be a very interesting ritual . It turns out that a " passout ceremony " is a graduation ceremony . You " pass out " of your class . And our saloon is really just a salon . Too bad . So , we still don 't know for sure if Rachel has either Typhoid or Malaria because she didn 't get tested . Apparently when she first went in , the guy looked up holding an uncovered tube of blood from the previous patient ( remember , Rachel is not a fan of blood ) . Then he sat her down and grabbed a thin line of plastic tube that was wet . For half a second she thought that it would be used to draw the blood , and her immediate reaction was " I can not let that go inside of me , " and freaking out , she left the room . For those of you that are wondering , the plastic tube was used to tie off your arm to help the nurse find the vein . Rachel decided that though she probably didn 't have Typhoid as she had gotten a vaccination for it before we left , she did have a good chance of having malaria and so she is now on the malaria treatment with me which includes four days of 8 pills per day . As for the rest of the staff and habitants of the house hold , the other white people are fine , and all the African staff have low levels of typhoid . In fact , the nurse didn 't even want to treat them because it was so normal and not serious yet . I guess having typhoid perpetually is just part of life in Africa , among other things . On a last note , many have asked when we get home . I will be coming home August 31st . Rachel may be coming home sooner depending on if a job she applied for wants to interview her ( or she might just go home early anyways - she hasn 't decided yet ) . I should mention that this is kind of her dream job - assistant curator at a museum in Orem , which is why she 's willing to fly back early just for the interview . At 1AM Tuesday morning , I awoke feeling quite nauseous , and thus began the a thrilling night during which neither Rachel nor I slept - she covering her ears with the pillows and me hugging the toilet . Tuesday was fairly uneventful . I spent most of the day with a queasy stomach in bed . Wednesday I was at about 80 % and enjoyed a nice beef hot plate meal at a new ( to me anyways ) restaurant in town . I slept great that night and awoke this morning feeling 100 % better and ready to work . I did until 1PM that is . Around that time the nausea hit suddenly and I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to get checked out at the clinic . That decision may have had something to do with reading the guide book this morning that said if you think you have malaria , get medical attention immediately . So , I grabbed our little garbage can in our bathroom ( in case I didn 't make it to the clinic ) and jumped in the car . From there my Swedish boss friend raced ( literally - I was almost afraid of dying in a car accident before we made it to the hospital , though I am very grateful for his assistance ) me to the clinic . The clinic was small and had a small waiting room with windows around it for the dispensary ( pharmacy ) , cashier and registrar . I was registered in as Mr . Peter Harrison despite my objections , after which I paid my 7 cedis ( ~ 5 dollars ) and was immediately taken to have my blood pressure and weight taken . Being white here certainly has its advantages I think because unlike everyone else , I went right in to see the doctor who had them test me for malaria and typhoid . From his office , I paid my 9 cedis for the tests and entered the Laboratory , where they took my blood between random attacks of nausea . Basically there was some other random guy next to me and they pulled the needle out of him , stuck it in me and sucked out a bunch of blood . Very efficient . Just kidding . They use disposable syringes and needles . Anyways , they took my blood sample and told me to wait for 40 minutes . So , I headed to the bathroom where I awaited the rPosted by We saw this man weaving , and took a picture for my mom . ( She also weaves , although her loom looks a little different than this one . ) The man didn 't speak English , but I 'm sure it works just like any other loom . July 10 , 2009I haven 't written in my journal for a while . There hasn 't seemed to be a whole lot worth writing about . Whenever we go to the villages , children shout " sinaminga ! " and wave to us . Sinaminga means white person . Today when we visited one house , all of the children started saying " sinaminga bah tow fee . " I asked Abraham ( employee ) what that meant , because I thought it was all Dagbani . Apparently " bah tow fee " is supposed to be English , " buy toffee . " I have never seen toffee in Ghana , so apparently somebody once brought them toffee and somebody else made up the chant and taught it to every kid in the district . After learning what it meant , EVERY time some kids would start shouting at us , I would hear at least one would ask us to buy them toffee . A couple of adults even said it to us . In the evening we went to Zagyuri , my favorite village . The kids in this village recognize me and come to say hello whenever we are there . Today , they taught me a hand clapping game and another game where you stand in a circle and sing a song and take turns dancing in the middle . It was really fun to play with them . One of the girls ( I think she is our sales agent 's daughter , and she is kind of defensive of me as " hers " and always pushes her way right next to me ) tried to climb into the truck with me when we were leaving , which I thought was cute . I 'm sure she would have been crying within the hour if we did take her home with us . We started taking Dagbani classes this week . It has been really useful to start to understand what people are talking about , and to have a few words to communicate with them . After our first class , we were discussing African languages with one of our employees , and he told us that if we were to learn Hausa ( a Nigerian language ) it would confuse us because Hausa has " he " and " she . " Dagbani , and other Ghanaian languages apparently , do not have words for " he " and " she " so it is basically impossible to know a person 's gender when somebody is talking about thPosted by Wouldn 't you like to buy health insurance from this reputable looking company ? Actually , there are many businesses here that are called " schemes . " It 's obviously a translation problem . And this sign is pretty nice by Ghanaian standards . A little dirty , but not too bad . Also note the crazy acronym at the bottom . ALL businesses here with names three words long or longer make up acronyms for themselves and put them on their signs . I really wonder if people refer to them by their acronyms , or if having an acronym just makes them feel more official . June 29 , 2009Today I met the chief of Tamale . If I had known I was going to meet the chief , I would have worn some African clothes , or at least dressed nicer than I did today . I was invited to go to town to " run some errands " and I thought it would be nice to get out of the house . Jason wanted to meet with the chief to ask him if he could buy the chief 's drums from him , and that was one of the errands on the list today . The chief lives in a compound in the center of Tamale with round huts like the ones in the villages , but all made of concrete . When we first arrived , we had to wait in a little courtyard with many benches in the shade of a tree . There were other chiefs and guards sitting out there waiting . All of the chiefs I have seen wear these hats that have a tight band around the head and then go back to a loose floppy part that hangs over the back of their head . All of the chiefs I have seen also wear glasses and use canes to walk . I 'm not sure if they need them or if it is just a sign of being a chief . The chief himself was sitting in one of the round huts with a door facing us , so we could see him inside . He was on a chair on an elevated platform so he would always be seated higher than everybody else . After waiting in the courtyard , Babs ( our hotel owner / store manager / friend ) came back to us and told us the chief was very busy today , but if we came tomorrow at any time he would see us . I was fine with that ; I wasn 't too sure about being with the chief when Jason asked for his drums , in case it was very offensive . Then , someone told us the chief had changed his mind and would see us . We went around to the back side of the main compound and gave some people some money , and then we went into a separate room to see the chief . I guess it was an honor that he took us into a private room to meet with him . We had to remove our shoes to enter . The room was carpeted , which I had never seen before , and it was one of the nicest rooms I 've seen in Ghana . An old man who was a chief or a subchief led us intoPosted by June 28 , 2009Yesterday we went to Paga , the northernmost city in Ghana . In Paga , there are a couple of ponds with sacred crocodiles in them that you can touch and sit on for photos . The crocodiles are sacred in that they cannot be killed , and supposedly they have never harmed a human . I was skeptical of this , but when we got to the pond I felt like the crocodiles must be pretty safe . There were people washing clothes in the water , and a few men waded several feet from the shoreline ( with crocodiles visible nearby ) to throw a fishing net into the water . Animals drank from the pond although it is the rainy season and if the pond were dangerous , they could find somewhere else to go . All of these things convinced me that the crocodiles were safe . We paid some local men a fee and they took us to the pond with chickens to lure the crocodiles out of the water . Since there were four of us , we got four chickens . First , they fed a smaller crocodile so it would leave us alone , and then they made a couple of them squawk at the biggest crocodile so it would come out of the water to be fed . I admit I was still a little nervous to go up next to the very biggest crocodile and put my hand on its back . While we were there taking pictures with the crocodiles , one of the men who was guiding us decided it would be a good idea to throw one of the chickens to some of the smaller crocs who were coming close so they would leave us alone . He didn 't quite throw it close enough for the crocodile to catch it in its mouth , so the chicken ran back straight at me . I realized that if the chicken was right next to me the crocodile would come to me to catch it ( and possibly catch me instead of the chicken ) , so I ran . The chicken followed me . Eventually the chicken passed me and the small crocodiles stopped running at me , in fact they stopped running at all because the chicken got too far away . The whole thing felt very surreal , and afterwards I could hardly believe I had come so close to being attacked by a pack of " tame " crocodiles . I reallyPosted by Here in Ghana , animals roam the streets freely . The most common animals are goats / sheep ( I 'm not really sure how to tell the difference ; they all look the same to me ) , but cows are very common as well . Very few of these animals have markings , but supposedly everybody in the community knows who they belong to and only uses their own animals for food . I 'm not sure about the protocols dealing with roadkill , but it has to happen fairly often because of people 's poor driving and the animals ' stupidity . But back to the cows . The cows here are the strangest looking cows I have ever seen . Most of them have these odd humps on their backs , which seem to be fatty and not bony . I have seen them wobbling back and forth on some of the cows . It is like they are crosses between cows and camels . Many of them also have ripply fringes of loose skin hanging down from their necks , some from their bellies as well . The horns also seem to grow however they feel like : up , down , sideways , curved , etc . There isn 't a lot of uniformity . So here is a picture of one of these strange cows for your enjoyment . June 9 , 2009Ever since we got back from Mole I have had a terrible cold . Yesterday I felt a lot worse , but today I have a worse cough . Don 't worry - the symptoms of a cold are not the symptoms for malaria or typhoid , so I 'm not dangerously ill . Nothing of note has happened the last couple of days . We are just continuing on with our jobs as usual . There have been a couple of funny things we have seen that I have wanted to write about , but forgot . Here is one that I remember right now . Almost all of the taxis around here have things written on the back , probably for good fortune or to send a message or something . The other day when we were driving around , we saw a taxi proclaiming : God is God Burger People here don 't eat burgers , and so I 'm not really sure what was meant by that . And here is another . Today , Zet , our cook , told me that Africa is good for me because I am getting fatter since I 've been here . I know she meant it as a compliment because here it is good to be fat , so I tried to seem happy to hear that . I thought it was funny that what is a compliment here is an insult at home . I don 't actually think it is true . Apparently she also had told Peter this a few times before , and he ( at least he said this to me ) thought to himself that I had actually lost weight since being here . Now don 't anybody worry that I 'm very concerned about my weight , either gaining or losing . I mostly just thought it was funny . Another thing . People here call plastic " rubber . " And a plastic bag is also a rubber . It really confused me when I first heard it , because there is really no rubber around . Just plastic . June 11 , 2009Today I have tried two new Ghanaian foods . The first is a little bean biscuit called kosi or something like that . It is generally eaten for breakfast . It was good , and it was a little bit spicy . The second new food I have tried today is called TZ ( pronounced tee - zet ) . It is basically a cross between mashed potatoes and homemade play - dough that is made out of corn flour . You dip it into soup . It waPosted by This is the mosque at Larabanga . The legend of its creation goes something like this : There was an important Muslim man who was traveling ( sometime around the early 1400s , but nobody knows for sure ) , and he decided to throw his spear and wherever it landed he would build a settlement . His spear landed on the site of this mosque , and its foundations were already built , presumably by Allah who wanted him to stay there . He built the mosque , and when he died they buried him underneath the tree you see in the left of the picture . Every year , the villagers make a special soup with the leaves from the burial tree and everybody has to eat it . June 6 , 2009This morning we drove to visit Mole ( pronounced MOW - lay ) National Park , a wildlife preserve . It was a beautiful morning for a drive - overcast and not too hot . The cars here do not have air conditioning , so you really appreciate days that are overcast . We drove over the White Volta on our way . It is the first river I have seen here , and it was pretty . I would never go in the water for fear of getting Guinea Worm , but it was nice to look at . The scenery along the way and once we got to Mole was very nice , much more lush than near Tamale although it isn 't very far away . It also seemed to be a bit more humid , but that could have been my imagination . Once we hit the turnoff for the 86 kilometer road to Mole National Park , the drive became very unpleasant . The road is never good , but it was especially bad because it rained the night before . The water washed away the soil so the entire road was covered in bumps not unlike a rumble strip next to the freeway . There were some parts of the road that were smoother than others , so we would try very hard to drive in those parts of the road . The road itself was raised a couple of feet and there was about a car - width of flat dirt space on either side . These flat parts down off the road were usually the best places to drive , when they weren 't full of puddles . The drive reminded me of being in an inner tube behind a boat on VERY choppy water . You bounce all the time , sometimes you go over the wake , or back inside , and you hold on for dear life and hope you don 't tip over . I 'm pretty sure the road should have a warning sign not to take infants on it , because the shaking would probably damage their brains . It took us three to four hours to get through the road . We stopped a few times to play Frisbee and walk around to have a break from the shaking . We also stopped right before we got to the park at a small town called Larabanga . Our tour book talked about the oldest mosque in Ghana , and we thought it would be fun to see it . We happened upon it by chance - we took a Posted by Fairuza got our dresses back to us the same day we went to take the measurement . I am definitely impressed . The dress is super comfortable , and I like it a lot ! Here I am with Beth . June 1 , 2009Today was a pretty slow day . I just worked in the warehouse all day long . My job is kind of frustrating because the cost of the products going out and the amount of money and product coming back at the end of the day never quite add up - either too much or not enough . It 's stressful . This evening I went on a walk with the other woman who is working on the project . It was really nice . It was actually the first time I went on a walk just to walk since I 've been here . The evening was really nice . There weren 't a lot of stars because it was a little cloudy . We also watched Top Gun this evening . What a stupid movie . Sorry if it 's your favorite . I thought it was gross that the love interest was so much older than Tom Cruise , and she was really ugly . 2 June . This morning , we had crazy power surges that fried three computer charge cords , including ours . It 's kind of a big problem to not have your computer when all of the work you need to do involves the computer , but we made do with the 2 computers we had that still worked . So we actually didn 't have power to our computer for the last several days , and I made notes for what to write about for each day . With the power surges ( and then , of course , the power outages ) , something happened to our water pump so we had no water to the house . I washed my hands with water from a pink bucket , which was an interesting experience . Nothing like Africa to make you appreciate everything you have . We went out to lunch today , and a little girl at the restaurant came over and sat at one of the chairs at our table . She was too little to talk for real , so she just babbled in baby talk . Beth , the other woman who is here , taught her how to play peek - a - boo and she thought it was a lot of fun . She would walk back and forth from her table to our table during the time we were there , and she cried when we left . So adorable . : - ) 3 JuneToday we went to a sales campaign in a village called Napaili . It is the poorest village that we work in - they don 't have electricity , but most Posted by May 24 , 2009Today was the second day of training . I was actually able to participate and do some of the training , which was interesting . I really wish I could speak the language so I wouldn 't have to rely on an interpreter so much . We are planning to take a class , so we will be better able to communicate with the people who live here . This afternoon , we went to the home of Felicia , one of the Ghanaian women who is working with us on the project . She lives in a concrete duplex with a tin roof ( a wealthy home , if you will recall ) . We went inside her home and met her two little girls : Lucky , who is 4 , and Melchizia , who is 9 months . They are beautiful girls . The inside of her home was interesting . The house was pretty small . There was a kitchen as you walked in , and then a hallway to the main room . There were couches along the wall and then some very nice satiny curtains dividing the sitting room from a sleeping room , where we saw the baby . Peter noticed a very nice TV in the sitting room , but I didn 't see it so I cannot describe it . We sat outside under a tree and chatted after our little tour of the house . We sampled Guinea Fowl eggs , which taste exactly like chicken eggs except they are smaller . ( Actually , we have been eating Guinea Fowl eggs for a while now , but since she wanted us to try them we did . ) Guinea Fowl meat also tastes just like chicken , except there is not so much meat on the animal . I will post a picture of a Guinea Fowl on here sometime ; they are pretty funny looking . While we were sitting , Felicia called over various vendors who were passing by and did her grocery shopping . She bought some enormous yams and a couple of bags of small , spicy red peppers . She also stopped the corn flour vendor so we could see what it looks like ( just like wheat flour , only perhaps a little brighter white ) . It was fun to pass the time there and see what a typical Ghanaian family would do on a Sunday afternoon . We had our own sacrament meeting here this evening . Although there is a temple in Accra and a fairly largPosted by I have got to think of better titles for these posts . : - ) May 22 , 2009This morning the power is still out . We woke up at 7 : 30 and it seemed too dark , so we went back to sleep . Because the power doesn 't work , the water heater doesn 't work either . I have only showered twice in the week we 've been here ( including today ) and both times the water has been cold . I actually decided that I don 't mind cold showers so much . When it 's so hot , it feels nice . So maybe I will shower more often in the future . We have a woman who works for us here , cleaning the house , washing our clothes , and cooking our breakfast and dinner . Every morning we have what compares to an omelet with onions and peppers ( no cheese ) on a piece of French bread for breakfast , with hot chocolate to drink . For dinner we nearly always have rice , and then either vegetable stew to pour over it , kebabs , or fried chicken . It all tastes pretty good , and neither of us have been sick yet . Her name is Zet . Today Jason told Zet that I would like to show her how to cook some American food , and that I would like to go with her to the market sometimes . She interpreted that to mean " Rachel will cook dinner tonight . " So when we discovered there were no dinner plans , I went out to the kitchen ( it 's a separate building , and very hot ) and threw some spaghetti sauce together . Our refrigerator is broken , so she had someone bring us a frozen block of meat , and we sautéed it with onions and garlic and threw in some tomato paste and a French Provencal spice mix . It wasn 't the best sauce ever , but it worked . While I am talking about Zet , I should mention that something about the way they do laundry here is amazing . Old stains that I couldn 't get out are gone , and our whites are much , much brighter . I have been very pleased . I don 't love to have my clothes dried on a line because they are kind of stiff , but it 's fine . May 23 , 2009Today we spent the day doing training for the sales agents . I can 't really talk about what they 're doing or how , because this iPosted by |
Kelsey had worked hard to look good for their date tonight . She had curled her thick brown hair , looked up tips on how to enhance her green eyes , and even spent money on a pedicure . Her high heels were killing her , but they matched perfectly with her white dress that draped perfectly over every curve and pushed her normal height of five - foot five to five - foot six . So far the night was amazing and was reminded why she was in love with the man next to her . He was the only one for her . They have been together for about two years . He had celebrated every birthday with her and now she was 22 . Many things had happened in her relationship with her dad dying , her brother being put in prison , and the near break up because of silly miscommunications . Kelsey was super emotional and cried a lot and she was always amazed at the fact that he could put up with her but now , she would do absolutely anything for him . " I love you . Thank you for everything , " she kissed his cheek then leaned her head on his shoulder as they continued walking back to the apartment . Suddenly their moment was ruined when a man ran out of the bank . " Someone stop him ! " A man screamed from the door just as police cars were whizzing by . The moment seemed to be happening in slow motion . Kelsey had no idea how to react or what to think , but she waited for someone to stop the man . Jake smoothed out his jacket as he took his beautiful girlfriend , Kelsey 's , hand gently , intertwining their fingers . He was happy … so happy in fact it should have been criminal . Him and Kelsey had been together a difficult but rewarding , amazing two years . He was with her though it all and after the near break up he realized … this was where he wanted to be . Jake realized he loved this woman more then he ever thought was possible to love anyone . He didn 't mean to sound cheesy but it was true and nothing could change his mind . Tonight … before they went to bed he had hidden in his secret lock box only he knew about , a diamond ring with a gold band and a very expensive , fine bottle of wine . Jake was going to ask her … . ask her to marry him . There would be no other woman for him . If she said no then he would just be by himself . Jake listened as she leaned into him , kissing him on the cheek and delighting his senses as she spoke in her sweet , angelic tone . " I Love you … " she said . He stopped in his tracts and turned his head , a gentle smile crossed his lips , a gentle , loving look in his bright green eyes . " I love you too … My angel . " He wrapped one arm around her waist , pulling her against him and into a loving and gentle kiss . Jake kissed her until a few moments later a man burst out of the bank they were walking past , calling out for help . He brushed his shaggy , but short casual reddish brown out of his face , pulling away , turning away from Kelsey towards the man . " I can help where did he go … ? " The man directed him in a panic . Quickly he turned to her again , placing a quick peck on the lips , cherishing it for a moment before pulling away . " I 'll be back soon , you won 't even miss me . I promise Love . " Kelsey didn 't have time to beg him not to leave . Something didn 't feel right but she blamed it on the fact that she was a worry wart and she had never been upfront to a robbery . Slowly she continued to walk down the street so she could at least keep an eye on her man . Any moment he left her side she missed her so that was a silly promise , but cute nonetheless . A gun shot sounded and she froze . All heat left her body and it felt as if her heart stopped . " No , " She murmured and ran down the street . Jake was down on the ground , blood staining his clothes , his complexion pale . She knelt on the ground and put her hands over her mouth . Her green eyes flooded with tears as she rocked back and forth trying to make herself believe this was a lie , that Jake would get up at any moment , wrap her in his arms , and kiss her like he always had . Kelsey was to the point of begging him to stand up and asking him to tell her everything was okay . " Don 't leave me , " she whispered in his ear while cradling his head in her lap , tears running down her chin and dripping into his hair . Gingerly she ran her fingers through his hair " I 'm glad you didn 't cut your hair when I asked you too . You 're sexier this way , " she teased through the tears , trying to prove to herself that everything was just fine . She didn 't know how long it was , but out of no where she was being pulled away from her love . Everything was a blur , her fighting the police officer , the flash of the ambulance . Kelsey didn 't even hear the sirens . The next moment she was sitting in the ambulance staring down at Jake , his cool hand cradled between hers . Blood stained the purity of her white dress . Her mascara ran down her cheeks . " I love you Jake , " She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against his hand . Maybe when she opened them again she would find herself cuddled next to him in bed or leaned against him after falling asleep during a movie , because surely all this had to be a dream . Jake ran down the street as the criminal rounded the corner . Before he could say or do anything , all he heard was two loud bangs as he was looking down the barrel of cold steel . Then there was a pressure on his chest and stoumuch . An extreme pressure that knocked him back onto his back . He gasped loudly and placed a hand on his chest , trying to take away the pain . Jake groaned as he felt hot liquid forming , pooling around him . His eyes widened as he saw it was blood . Slowly , his skin started to get paler and paler . The man could feel blood draining from his body , his heart rate slowing , it was getting harder for him to breathe . Jake heard her drop to her knees , his angel scooted closer to him , resting his head on her lap . He looked up at her , his eyes wide , a few tears escaped as he saw her distress . Both of them knew it . . . he had been shot , and was bleeding out . . . Dying . Even still she leaned forward , her sweet voice caressing his ear . It calmed him a bit as he heard : It broke his heart . . . absolutly broke his heart . He could feel tear , her tears dripping onto his face and hair . Broken , heavy sobs escaped his lips but they were barely audible as it hurt very much to cry this hard . His body shook in fear and pain . She ran her fingers through this hair , saying something he couldn 't make out . Everything was starting to become blurry and a haze . Just then someone moved his head and pulled Kelsey away from him , much to his distress . As they jostled him about he could feel his body becoming weak and cold . . . very cold . Next thing he could feel was the people in the ambulence working furiously on him to keep him from bleeding to death . He barely managed to turn his head and look at Kelsey . Mascara was smeared down her fair cheeks and one of his hands in hers but he could barely feel it . With the last of his strength he squeezed her hand , shaking as he did . She brought his hand up to her lips , pressing her soft , warm lips against his pale , cold hand covered in his blood . " I love you . . . " He barely heard her say . His once bright , clear green eyes were clouding and black started to come into his vision . Jake could feel his heart rate slowing , panic in the voices and actions of the paramedic 's as he felt himself slip away . " Kelsey . . . I - I . . . " Before he could finish his body went limp , his hand slipped from Kelsey 's and a thud as it hit the cold table he was laying on . The heart moniter flat lined as Jake felt his heart thud to a stop in his chest . It was over . He closed his eyes . . . so tierd . . . he fell asleep , drifting away from his body . There it was , the squeeze , that must be Jake telling her its time to wake up , she knew it was a dream . With hope in her soul she opened her eyes only to have his words fade and his hand slip from hers . The monitor screamed as his heart beat disappeared . That was it . . . the end . He was gone . Kelsey couldn 't cry . No emotion showed on her face as she stared down at the one she loved , the one who meant everything to her . She could see the paramedics moving around , but all sound had faded , images began to blur together . " I can 't o this , " Kelsey breathed out , closing her eyes again just as tears fell . Time had passed . How much ? She didn 't know . Kelsey found herself on Jake 's side of the bed adorned in his clothes . Her eyes were so sore and nothing seemed as bright . With a groan she forced herself off the bed only to find that her once organized room was trashed . Did she really do this and not remember ? It wouldn 't surprise her if she did , she didn 't feel alive so days must have just fused together . Out of desperation she called his phone just to hear his voicemail and warm tears flowed down her cheeks again . A knock sounded on the front door , and Kelsey contemplated ignoring it until a key slid in and the door opened . Yesterday she would have thought it was Jake , she would have prayed it was Jake . " Kelsey ? " her sister 's soft voice called " Mom gave me the spare key . " There was no answer , she couldn 't answer , but it wasn 't long before Shae poked her head into the room . " Oh Kelsey , " Shae tried to sound optimistic , but her hear broke for her sister . " I can 't do this . . . " was the only response Kelsey gave . Shayne hadn 't slept for a few days . The images of that precious woman knelt over him was heartbreaking , what was worse was the fact he saw the man 's ghost . Out of selfishness he ran from the scene , he didn 't feel like being bothered with anyone 's life , he didn 't want to be around mourning or heartbreak . His near death experience which cursed him with this " gift " was enough for him . With a heavy sigh he reached out a little a cigarette " these will be the death of me , " he murmured as he lit it " only if it was fast . " Shayne shoved off the couch and ran his fingers quickly through his shaggy dirty blonde hair . The news of the murder was everywhere . Shayne couldn 't get away from it and he cursed as he turned off the radio . Being inside was driving him crazy , he had to get out . Hiding from life never works , he had tried it several times before , and hiding from ghosts is near impossible , it is like he has a smell and they are just attracted to him . Finally , he was outside and walking but to his dismay he passed the woman from the other night , that precious broken woman . " I won 't be able to hide for long , " he groaned knowing that soon her love would be the next thing he saw . It seemed like a long while later that Jake took a long deep breathe , letting it escape his lips . He sat up , opening his eyes . Where he was it was dark and cold , he looked around and recognized it was a hospital morgue . He was confused … the last thing he remembered was laying in an ambulance … dying . But now , he was sitting up , seeing the world clearly and though his own eyes . Jake took a breathe and to his enormous relief there was no pain in his stomach or chest . He was dressed in the clothes from the night in the ambulence but they were no longer blood stained which was strange … The man got up , shaking his head . Had he imagined the whole thing … ? There were other people laying on cold metal tables as well but they weren 't so lucky . It had to have been a mix up . He was about to reach out for the door handle but it swung open as someone came it . It almost hit him as a man walked past him . Jake walked out of the hospital and into the streets . Everyone walked past him not noticing . Once he even tried to stop someone but they just walked right though him . The man must be imagining this all … he had to be . There was no other option . All of a sudden he saw her … his angel . Jake smiled happily and ran up to her reaching out to touch her but … his hand went right through her . It wasn 't a dream … and the evidance was clear on Kelsey 's face and though the events of today . Jacob " Jake " Aldridge was dead … he had been killed by those gunshots … As Jake turned he was a guy … with shaggy dirty blonde hair looking at him . He looked at him , blinking . " Y - You … . you can see me … ? " Suddenly Kelsey chilled . It was a weird sensation more like a brush of air than anything , but she shrugged it off . Someone must have just breathed or the wind must have picked up . " Are you getting sick ? " Shae asked softly . With a slight shake of her head Kelsey gave her answer . Maybe if I get sick I 'll die and I won 't have to go through this . I can 't do this . . . At that point her mind was made up . After Shae took her back home she was going to bring out all the alcohol and grab as many pills from the bathroom as possible . Life will be over at that point , the pain will be gone . " Don 't fear the reaper , " she murmured . " What was that ? " her sister glanced down at her , only to have Kelsey shake her head again . Shayne shook his head trying to ignore Jake , but soon enough guilt took over . " Yes I see you , no I 'm not dead . " He curtly nodded towards the TV " That 's you and your girlfriend fiance wife , whatever she is , is back there . " He grumbled and kept walking . This was no day to be playing with the dead and tomorrow won 't be the day either . It isn 't right to meddle , and as far as Shayne was concerned , he was going to stay far away from whatever was going on . As much as the man wished Jake would leave , he knew this was only the beginning . Jake now knew that a human could see him , could talk to him , and Shayne anticipated that he would do everything in his power to connect with the one he loves . " She is miserable , " he murmured again . It wasn 't hard to read the emotion on her face , and in all honesty , Shayne was surprised she was still alive . That was a suicide case if he ever saw one , and he has seen many . It isn 't hard to peg the mentally unstable now - a - days . Hell , could anyone be considered stable ? People fall in love and get hurt or run after criminals and get shot . Shayne looked over at the ghost . This is only the beginning . His expression was grim , but finally he welcomed Jake knowing it would be easier to accept him than to run from him . ' I know she is … ' he thought to himself . The man didn 't seem to want to have him around but he didn 't care . He wasn 't going to leave him be . This was the only person who could see him and talk to him . " She is my Girlfriend … but I was going to propose to her … How long has it been and have they found the punk who did this to me ? It just feels like I 've been asleep , I 've lost track of time … " He waited until the man responded and sighed . " I figured … And I know she is misrible … We 've been together for a long time , I can read her like an open book … " Jake saw the grim look on Shayne 's face . Saw how dark it was and followed after him . " Hey … what is that look about ? Is something wrong with her ? You know something I don 't ? " he asked anxiously . " What do you mean this is only the beginning ? " Jake was afraid now … afraid that something bad was going to happen … to either him or Kelsey . He was more reassured that her sister was with her but what about when she had to leave ? He could follow her back to their apartment but he couldn 't do a thing to stop her if she did something irrational and stupid . Plus he would loose contact with the only person whom he could get in contact with , so he stayed and followed the man , determined to find some awnsers to this puzzle … Shayne had to think for a moment . " Almost a week now and yes he has been caught , that was probably the brightest day for Kelsey so far . " For a moment the psychic became annoyed with Jake 's questioned , but the annoyance subsided when he realized the questions were stemming from pure concern . " Suicide , " he murmured " she doesn 't want to live anymore . " If she did kill herself Shayne doubted anyone would blame her , she did just lose someone who meant the world to her and now she is forced to go it alone . It is only the beginning with you . I doubt you 're going to leave me alone . " After walking the block he took the ghost back to his place . " welcome to my home , " he nodded curtly " now I don 't have to look crazy when we are talking . " Shayne smirked slightly at that comment picturing how he must of looked to people who walked by . The ghost couldn 't be two places at once , Shayne knew this and he also knew the thought of that precious woman killing herself not only broke his heart , but probably Jake 's too . There wasn 't anything he could do to stop the her , he was a stranger and probably wouldn 't take to kindly to a man knocking on her door ordering her to stay alive . " Maybe she will meet someone , " he shrugged , trying to be helpful . " She can 't stay stuck on your forever , you know ? " Well , she could , but what kind of life would that be ? There are plenty of fish in the sea , and any man would probably consider himself luck to have her , especially seeing how Jake love 's her . Shae dropped Kelsey back at her apartment . It was finally clean . When she had actually left the bedroom and walked through , she was surprised she did so much damage to things . She tossed her purse on a chair and went back into the bedroom to change into Jake 's clothes . Kelsey knew at some point she had to pack it up , but now it wasn 't ready . She pulled one of his button up shirt from the closet and put it on after slipping of her shirt and pants . In the corner of her eye she caught glimpse of the lock box , and her mind was distracted from what she originally planned . Pushing all the clothes back so she had room , she sank to her knees and stared at the keypad . Tapping her lips softly with her finger , she began trying to figure out a combination . His birthday , no . Her birthday , no . His little brother 's birthday , no . The day they met , no . Kelsey gave out a frustrated scream and left the room , she would deal with it another day . After plugging in her Ipod she allowed herself to be taken away by the music . Soon happiness began entering her heart . She danced around a bit and sang . Jake always told her she had a good voice . Kelsey 's face lit up . That was it ! She would become a singer ! How proud Jake would be of her . . . Jake . She lost her high and sat on the couch , burying her face in a pillow . Jake smiled a bit as he heard the man had been caught . He was happy … but it didn 't and wouldn 't bring him back to life … give him his body back . When he said suicide his breathe caught in his throat , his eyes widened a bit . The smile faded instantly . Kelsey wouldn 't … . would she ? Before he could think it , words escaped his mouth . He shook his head not wanting to believe that Kelsey would even think about doing that to herself . Jake entered the apartment and immediately picked up on the smell of cigarette smoke . A small frown came across his lips . Then the man said something about her finding another man and his fists clenched . He knew that at some point she would have to move on but … He didn 't want that quite yet . If she moved on , why would she care if he tried to make contact with her … ? Even more so … She would probably take offense and not believe the man . Jake sighed and looked over , spotting a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table . Shayne wanted to tell Jake to chill out , but he wasn 't the dead one who left people behind . With a shrug he lit a cigarette in spite of the ghost , plus it isn 't like the smoke will effect Jake anyway . Do something . . . " I don 't know what to do . I 'm a stranger . How would you feel if a random woman came up to you and said ' excuse me sir you 're recently mowed down significant other is talking to me ' ? " He raised an eyebrow and looked at the ghost . Shayne noticed he didn 't much like the idea of Kelsey moving onto another man . It was bound to happen at some point , but he doubted it would happen anytime soon . How can you see me . . . . That was a long story to get into . Shayne really didn 't want to open up how he managed to get this supposed gift , but it would come out one way or another . He tapped the ash from his cigarette before starting . " I almost died in a car accident two years ago . Lost my fiance , my unborn child , and my little sister . We were taking my sister back home , she had spent the night with me . " There short and sweet . Didn 't go into all the gory details and got the main story out . His heart saddened at the thought , they had picked out a name and everything Blake Micheal . With a shake of the head he forced his memory out , he had been doing pretty good at not reliving the past until now . " Precisely why I picked it up . Cassia told me never to kill myself if she died , I 'm not dead yet so I obviously didn 't kill myself , but in several years I might be . " He shrugged . It wasn 't a good reason , but it was the one he would stick with . " I 'm no stranger to what you two are going through . " He mumbled then got comfortable on the couch . Its been two years and he still hasn 't moved on from Cassia and his child . Sure , there had been some one night stands caused by a drunk stupor , but that was the only relief he ever got . Now he walks around seeing dead people , who until now , never realized he could see them much less talk to them . Sometimes Shayne wishes he could not care and move on , be happy again with someone else , but Cass # 12 Jake came over , his eye twitching a bit in irritation . He stood at the side of the couch looking down at Shayne . True the cigarette could not effect him now but the smoke still smelled bad . " You don 't know hat to do so your going to sit here and waste your life away puffing those cancer on a sticks … ? It 's no way to live a life . You help me now or so help me I will go out there and tell every ghost from this city that you can see them and talk to them … . " Then he listened as the man explained to him what happened to his fiancée and unborn child and he sighed sadly . " It sucks … I know . But you know what … If she told you not to kill yourself then your not doing a very good job listening to her . Your smoking , so you might as well have swallowed a bottle of pills and put the bottle to your lips … or put a gun to your head . It 's not any better so think of what she would want for you … If it 's been two years then man … it 's that time … Your going to waste your whole life away dwelling on something that you can 't change no matter how much you want it to . I don 't want to be dead but I am so I deal with it … . And Kelsey … She 's got time … but you got to keep her from hurting herself and I want to get in contact with her so get up and follow me or I will keep you up all night if you fall asleep . You stay awake it won 't be any better for you . I don 't care if she believes you or not just do it … please … " The ghost had a point . He was still killing himself , but he was doing it slowly , Cassia would be so disappointed . " Fine , " Shayne grumbled and snubbed out his cigarette . " I will help you . Just don 't tell anyone else . " This felt like a wild goose chase . Kelsey wouldn 't believe a stranger even if it had to do with Jake , but anything is worth a try . It took him a moment to get up , but finally he did . He cursed under his breath as he headed back to the door . Shayne knew approximately where she lived , but the guidance of Jake would still be needed . " Can I be honest ? " he asked before walking out of the door " I 'm scared of developing feeling for your girl . " Shayne murmured then walked out . It wasn 't long until they reached Kelsey 's apartment . Soft country music could be heard playing from within . Shayne gave Jake a weird look . He hadn 't heard country for awhile and it definitely wasn 't his choice in music , but to each their own . With a bit of hesitation he reached to knock on the door but stopped . " I don 't know what to say , " he whispered and glanced at Jake . " I don 't make it a habit to talk to girls , especially strange girls . " That didn 't sound right , but he didn 't realize that until it was already said . With a heavy sigh , he finally knocked . Kelsey was busy writing song lyrics , she finally had suicide out of her head and was being lulled away by her favorite country singer , Jason Aldean . A knock interrupted her . She wasn 't expecting anyone and she wasn 't dressed to see anyone . Her hair was in a messy bun , which she added to by shoving her pencil into it . All she had on was Jake 's button down shirt . " Hold on ! " Kelsey called . Quickly she glanced around the room but couldn 't find shorts or pants , but whatever , she didn 't care . The door opened and there was Shayne . She gave him a questioning look and leaned her head gently against the door " yes ? " There she was , that precious broken woman . Shayne couldn 't help but give a quick glance over her bare legs , he knew he would probably hear about it from Jake later . " H - h - i , " he stammered lightly . " My name is Shayne . " His voice faded as he gave way to nerves . Trying to regain confidence he looked at Jake , which was emptiness in Kelsey 's eyes . " I have been . . well you see . . . can I come in ? " Soon enough he was sitting on the couch , a notebook spread open on the coffee table , an almost empty wineglass next to it , and a little yorkie puppy curled up in the couch cushions . Everything was a bit messy , but Shayne understood . " I can see Jake . . and talk to him . . " he blurted out as Kelsey picked up her puppy and sat in a seat across from him . I can see Jake . . . . That was all she heard . Her face went blank as she idly petted little Zoey who was now curled up in her lap . Kelsey fought with herself . She had finally stopped crying that day and almost faced the fact he wouldn 't come back . Biting her lower lip , she dropped her head , hiding the fact her brilliant green eyes were flooding with tears . " How cruel can you be ? " she muttered , her voice cracking as a sob shook her light frame . " Do you take pleasure in this ? He just died . The man I am madly in love with just died and you have the balls to waltz up to my apartment and tell me you see him ! ? " The fact she raised her voice even surprised her . Kelsey didn 't know that among all the sadness there was anger . " Prove it . " She had to think of something only Jake would know , something intimate " The first night we had slept together , the night I gave up my virginity . . what did he say to me ? " Finally , she looked over at Shayne , tears still clouding her eyes , her bottom lip trembling slightly as she tried to fight the tears . Jake clenched his jaw as Kelsey opened the door . There she was … his angel dressed on one of his button up shirts that was way too big on her . She looked just as beautiful as he remembered . Then Jake recalled Shayne 's comment on him being afraid of falling for her . When he looked back over the ghost realized Shayne had looked his girl over and he frowned as the man talked briefly with her . She let him and looked around . Things were a mess … it must have been really rough on her … more so then he realized . Jake went and stood near her , wishing to touch her again … so much . Occasionally he would glance over at Shayne then back to Kelsey who had picked up her little dog that he had got for her , for her birthday not too long ago . As the man told her he could see and talk with him , Kelsey 's eyes filled with tears and she quickly became upset . Her voice raised and it surprised him . Kelsey rarely raised her voice this much , even he took a step back , flashing an apologetic nod at Shayne . Then she demanded to know , demanded that he give proof that he could see and hear him . Kelsey wanted to know what he , himself had said the night they first slept together . The night his lover had given up her virginity for him . Jake smiled a bit , remembering that night as clear as day . " Say this word for word Shayne … " he said going over and sitting on the arm of the seat Kelsey was sitting in . " You gave up something precious for me … I will never forget it . I love you more then words can describe Kelsey Renae . I promise to take care of you as long as you will have me … " " Tell her , I 'm standing right next to her . . . and that I think she is as beautiful as ever wearing that shirt . That shirt is the one I wore on our first date and the first time she met my brother . Also the black suit I bought and wore to her dad 's funeral is still in our closet . That I know her brother is in jail , also that We almost broke up after being togeather for eight months because of some miscommunications , my ex - girlfriend instigated it saying that we were back togeather when we clearly wern 't ever going to be back togeather . . . . All that should be proof enough . . . " The room went quiet except for the soft growling of Zoey as she looked at Jake . Then there it was , that chill she felt in the street that one day . Normally she would blame it on the apartment being drafty , but now that wasn 't the case . He was there next to her . The words Shayne were saying sunk in and she looked towards the direction of the chill . Everything in her wanted to see him , wanted to feel him , but she couldn 't . All she felt was coolness on her cheek and that would have to suffice . She couldn 't talk any longer because of the lump in her throat . Gently , she put the puppy down and stood up , grabbing the wine glass from the table and heading to the kitchen . Shayne couldn 't help but watch her walk away , her movements so graceful , so fluid . He looked at Jake apologetically for looking at his love . " Do you want anything ? " Kelsey asked softly and looked over her shoulder at the stranger in her living room . It felt nice to have someone there , even if he was a stranger , but this stranger brought Jake with him . Shayne simply shook his head . He could see why Jake was head - over - heels for this girl . It was almost as if he could feel Jake 's every emotion and see the precious woman through his eyes . " So you love him , huh ? " Shayne said awkwardly . Kelsey scoffed " That 's an understatement . " She murmured as she returned to her original seat with a full cup of wine . " I don 't just love him . It goes beyond that . He is my world , my everything , you could even say my reason for breathing . Jake kept me going , kept me alive , and inspired my dream . He supported my every whim . He is . . was . . . my forever . " Her sigh was heavy with pain as she took a sip of wine . Her soft lips touched the glass and immediately Shayne wished he was that glass , wished he was Jake before he died . Quickly he pushed the thoughts from his mind , cursing Jake under his breath for making him come here , for making him talk to Kelsey . Once again the room went silent and the atmosphere felt awkward . Shayne then noticed the notebook spread out over the table . Words were scratched out and added in , the pages looked like a mess but a few lines stuck out " and there her world was , slipping away , slipping away . Laying vulnerable in the chill of the night fading away , fading away . " He didn 't know if he should of read them out loud , but Kelsey didn 't protest . " I wrote that , " she said a bit bashfully . " Jake always encouraged me to sing , he said I could make it . So that 's a product of a few songs . I don 't think they are that good " Then her face lit up and she got up , moving next to Shayne . One leg curled under her as she sat on the couch and faced him . " I learned that I have artistic talent too . " Picking up the notebook she flipped to a page that was sketched out . Two people were together , laying on a blanket , a heart drawn in the sand next to them . The girl was laying half on the guy looking down at him caught in mid laugh . " It isn 't perfect , " Kelsey said , but her face showed pride in her work . " and of course everything is about Jake . " She laughed and for a moment her eyes lit up . It was all too much for Shayne . " I got to go . " Quickly he got up and looked back at the confused girl . " I 'm sorry . " He whispered before opening the door and leaving . He would owe Jake an apology later , at the apartment , probably along with an explanation that he was fully willing to give , but right now he needed some air , he needed to get away . Once he left Kelsey slowly began doubting if what she went through was a dream , maybe she had too much wine and hallucinated it , maybe this whole thing was still a dream , and in a few hours she would wake up with Jake . Jake was a little heart broken as she said nothing to him … and got up , getting another glass of wine . But what did he expect … ? Honestly … there wasn 't much to expect . His heart became a bit lighter as she described how much he was to her , just how much she loved him . But is also hurt him … he wished so badly that he could just hold her again and that things would go back to normal … he hated this . All of a sudden he felt Shayne 's eyes glance longingly at her lips and he frowned , looking at him . As he finished saying that Shayne read words to one of the songs that Kelsey wrote … he recognized it . It was one of his favorites . If he couldn 't live again … Jake certainly wanted to hear her voice again . It was absolutely beautiful , He missed it so much already . He became a bit annoyed as she moved over closer to him . This wasn 't how it was supposed to work ! He just wanted to speak to her … Then she showed him … showed him their drawing . The drawing based off their visit to the beach just this last summer . It was that picture … drawing of them laying together . He had always thought it was something that was special between them and he almost hated Shayne for looking at it . Quickly , without warning , he got up and bid her farewell before leaving . Jake had no choice but to follow and he followed Shayne as he walked . Obviously he looked uncomfortable but something was wrong . Shayne ignored the ghost until they got back to the apartment . He looked at his pack of cigarette 's but refused to take one . " She is wonderful , " he said quickly " she is absolutely in love with you . Its depressing . The fact that you 're dead and you basically still have her . Cassia crossed over immediately . She didn 't stay . I never saw her . " Growling slightly , he plopped down on the couch . Life wasn 't suppose to be like this , a precious woman shouldn 't be head over heels for a ghost . Someone like Kelsey shouldn 't be hurting in the first place , Jake shouldn 't be hurting , and he shouldn 't be dead . There has to be something Shayne could do . " Sorry for looking at her like I did , " Shayne mumbled and ran his hands through his hair . Then it hit him , the best idea ever . Find Jake a new body . He had read about things like this happening , and he was sure Jake would jump at the chance . " Do you want to live again ? " Shayne leaned towards the ghost , his eyes shining a bit . " I know how you can . It might not happen today , or tomorrow , or this week . I don 't know when it will happened . But if you had the chance would you live again ? " In a swift movement , Shayne was off the couch and by the phone . A number was already dialed as he waited for Jake 's answer . He had a friend that could help the ghost live again , she could direct them on what to do to get Jake with Kelsey again . It was a far stretch , but it could work , it had to work . " we will even go back to Kelsey 's after I make the call . I can talk for you the whole time . Damn I will even sleep on the couch and you can stay there with her or talk to her all night . I 'm feeling very generous my friend . " This was a chance he never got with Cassia . If finding Jake a new body didn 't work , at least he would have had this time with Kelsey . Jake was still frowning as the man apologized for looking at Kelsey like he did . He sighed running his fingers though his hair as Shayne did . All of sudden he looked away and when he looked back there was a sudden light in the eyes of the man . Jake blinked , suprised . Live again . . . ? The idea was very appealing and he wanted more then anything but . . . " Sure . . . Sure . . . " he said with a scowl . " Of course I would ! But go ahead , yank on the heart strings of the ghost . That 's pitiful . . . " He didn 't believe that he could do that . Once something or someone was dead . . . it had to stay that way . Shayne early got up and strarted calling someone . Though he did like the idea of going back to see Kelsey . . . and talk to her . He waited for Shayne so he could get on with something that was auctully possible . Shayne hung up then looked over at Jake . He could tell he doubted the fact he could live again , but he was wrong . " Here is what has to happen . When someone dies , their soul leaves their body . As their soul is leaving there is a small opening that another soul , you , could slip in . Soon the body heals and adapts to the new soul . At first , memories are only those of the previous person , but soon enough your memories will take over . " Shayne took a deep breath and nodded " just believe me and take a chance . What can happen ? You stay a ghost ? " He headed back to the door determined to go back to Kelsey 's to make Jake happy . " Come on ! We are going to back to your apartment . " Without another word , Shayne walked out and made his way to the apartment . This time he was confident when he knocked and smiled when she opened the door . Kelsey had a semi - annoyed look on her face . He came here earlier then left without a reason . " What ? " She said a bit rougher than normal . " I 'm sorry for my actions earlier , but your boyfriend over here wants to stay here . " Shayne motioned towards Jake . Kelsey just nodded and let them back in , taking the couch this time . " So that chill I get . Is that him ? " Kelsey asked softly . He just nodded . A small smiled played on her lips as she looked down the idea that her ghost boyfriend was still trying to be affectionate flattered her . " Did he like our date that night ? " her eyes were bright when she looked over at the man . The idea of talking to Jake directly without seeing him was weird , so she figured a conversation like this would be just as good . Iwaku is a roleplay community . We don 't just write stories - we live them ! Roleplaying is stepping in to the life of a character and experiencing what they experience . Here on Iwaku , we 're all about giving you the freedom to write anything you want while providing a safe and friendly community to do it in . Our site contains forum roleplay , chat roleplay , group roleplay , private roleplay , as well as other methods for living your stories . We are a community ran by REAL PEOPLE ! We are not a corporation or a company . Our server , domain , and software licenses are privately owned and paid for 100 % out of our own pockets . To help pay for these monthly costs , we are more than happy to take donations from members in exchange for super spiffy extra tools and features on the boards . For more information you can view our Donating FAQs . |
In the cab on the way to my interview , I was understandably nervous . If I got the job , it would be my first since graduating college a month ago . I had applied for the position of secretary with the interstellar embassy on a whim , without ever having seen a picture of the ambassador or any of his people , so I wasn 't sure what to expect . I did at least expect arrogance as they called their planet ' Heaven ' and their race ' Angels ' . " Serves me right for assuming anything . " I thought to myself when the ambassador opened the door . It almost had to be the ambassador or at least one of his race . He was so good looking as to be almost pretty and his brown - black wings , though folded tight against his back , barely cleared the floor and filled the doorway . Outspread , they would be awesome . The Angels race - name was probably given them by the first human that saw them . It was very descriptive . He smiled . " And here you are . Please , come in . " He stood away from the door to let me in , then led me to a small parlor off the hall and asked me to have a seat . Some of the chairs struck me as being an unusual shape but I chose one that seemed normal enough and comfortable . After serving me a cup of tea , Earl Grey laced with cinnamon , he sat down backwards on one of them . No , not backwards . The chairs were shaped so that that was the proper way to sit in them with a narrow front and no back at all . Naturally he couldn 't sit in a chair with a back . It would cramp , if not damage his wings . At ease ? No , not really . You 're far too pretty . I couldn 't say that . " Yes sir . I think so . I mean , I wouldn 't have applied if I didn 't think I could work for you . " I didn 't have any prejudice about aliens anyway . " What should I call you , sir ? " " It 's not pronounceable . At one point it requires vibrating three vocal chords at the same time on different tones and your people don 't seem to be physiologically capable of that . Anyway , I wanted it to be easy and familiar . " He laughed . " No , I don 't have a last name . There are so few of us that we only need one . Your planet amazes me . With so many people , two and even three names are not enough and there are duplicates . " " Ambassador Jeremy . " I said , trying it out . " So . What will my duties consist of ? " Talk like you have the job . Always talk like you already have the job . " This and that . " He took a sip of tea . " Personal assistant might be a more accurate description . I need you to help me organize the house , including a cook , since I 'm likely going to be to busy to attend to it myself . Also a driver and a car set up for me , unless you 'd like to teach me to drive . " " No . " His wings shifted slightly , ruffling and startling me . " I don 't want to emphasize the differences , I 'm here to emphasizes similarities between our two races . Besides , I have found that there are some people who resent me , even before they have met me . " He must have run across prejudice . Already . " Also , long distance flying here would be difficult at best . Your gravity is greater and your air is so thin . Even if it would support me , I 'd be out of breath in no time at all . " " Tomorrow , if you like . " he paused . " There are several extra rooms here . Would you like to use one of them or do you already have a place to live ? " That made me grateful . Washington rent was sky high , even more for a protected building . " I 'd rather stay here . It would be more convenient . " Now . How to tell my mother that I was moving in with a guy who was literally ' new to the planet ' . Mom would laugh herself silly . I started to get up but Jeremy stopped me . " You may be safer if you aren 't close to me . I 've had several threats and at least twice vandals have slipped through security . " His face was sad . " Thirty . Of your years . But it corresponds in life cycle to about seventeen for your race . Late adolescence . " Oh . No wonder he looked so young . For him , he was . " I volunteered . What was needed was someone old enough to be rational but young enough to be flexible and look on it in light of an adventure . The same reasons I 'd like you to work with me incidentally . " " No . " Jeremy got up and stretched and I gaped . The room had seemed very sparsely furnished until then , but he barely missed jamming a wingtip on the tea table by the window . He must have a twelve foot span and I felt insignificant and ugly by comparison . Talking , I had almost forgotten he was alien . Then I realized he must have done that on purpose for just that reason . Jeremy folded his wings again . " Why don 't you spend the rest of the day settling in ? My bedroom is the first one on the left at the head of the stairs but you 're welcome to any other room in the house . Should you need furnishings , call this store , " he handed me a card from one of the more exclusive shops in town " and tell them where to deliver whatever you need . Anywhere else , you 'll have to set up an account . " He turned to go . I found that my job was a combination of receptionist , appointment secretary and housekeeper . At first , I was nervous but I soon began to find it fun when I realized that Jeremy was giving me the leeway to do almost anything I wanted with the house . His only request was that I keep the staff down to a minimum , he was uncomfortable with many strangers in the house . Given that attitude of his , I was surprised the first time he asked me to attend a dinner party with him . I expected him to be ill at ease but he seemed to enjoy it . It wasn 't until we were home that I realized he 'd been acting . " My public persona " he called it , fatigued . After that , I would often ask that we be excused early , pleading another breakfast or morning appointment the next day . Sometimes it was even true . He was sleeping on his stomach , necessarily , with his wings folded but as I came in , he fluttered them then stretched full span . I had wondered why his bed was in the centre of the room with no other furnishings . I didn 't wonder anymore as I ducked under his left wing just before it knocked me over . Crouching down , I slid over to his bedside and was scooped up on the bed as he partially folded his wings again . It was a moment out of time . His left wing curved protectively over me , covering me but just barely touching . He radiated warmth and the morning light filtering through his feathers was muted and soft . I would have liked nothing better than to curl up in that strange protective embrace and go back to sleep . With a sigh , I pulled myself together and remembered my duties . Tentatively , I laid my hand on his back , at the base of his wing . I was not so much trying to awaken him as satisfy my curiosity about his wings . Until now , I hadn 't ever so much as seen him without a shirt . The first thing I noticed was that he was burning hot . If he was feverish , perhaps I 'd do better to let him sleep and reschedule his appointments for today . His heart was also beating a mile a minute . Slightly alarmed , I rubbed up and down his back across a swelling at the base of his wing , under the shoulder blade . " Sian ? " He wasn 't fully awake . He said my name in several tones at once , rich and resonate . He came more awake as he focused on me and jumped slightly . At once he folded his wings tightly and sat up . I realized that I was still lying on his bed and reddened . " Oh ! I 'm sorry . You didn 't answer your door and I thought I 'd better make sure that you were awake . It 's not what it looks like , when I came in you almost knocked me down . " His laughter interrupted me , bright as the sunshine . " I 'm not ill . My temperature is higher because my metabolic rate is higher . " Which also explained the swift heart beat . " But I don 't know anything about a lump . Where ? " He turned slightly away from me . " Um . A shoulder blade for my wing . " Seeing that I was blushing , he continued . " You couldn 't have known , but I assure you , it 's supposed to be there . " After that Jeremy was much less closemouthed about his world . With some direction from my timid questions , he taught me the basic biological differences ( some real surprises there ) , the general social structure ( which wasn 't very different ) and , at my request , the language . I couldn 't speak it , of course , but I learned to understand simple phrases and most single words . The written language was more difficult . It most resembled Chinese because all of the characters were words rather than letters . I finally realized that the ideograms were from an aerial view and got along better . It was some time after Jeremy explained the family structure of Heaven to me that I noticed that his manner to me was that of a brother . It was accepted that an unmarried man would take a sister or young aunt to social functions rather than a date . I encouraged this by acting the role as closely as I could manage and helping to alleviate his loneliness . Most of the time , it worked . Mostly he would take a morning or two a week and fly about the walled garden several times when no one was watching . After the first time I asked him why he should be so reticent . Watching him , I was awed and entranced . He turned my questions gently away with comments about not appearing too different . I thought this was silly and said so repeatedly . I teased him about not being himself and about his excessive caution , although with me he began to be less cautious . While he was teaching me , he would sometimes absently preen a wingtip , combing out the feathers with the underside of his nails which were delicately furred , like a brush , for the purpose . Perhaps it was the slow relaxation of his vigilance or perhaps he was simply unequipped to comprehend the cruelty of some minds . Either way , he found nothing odd when a waiter at one of the Cambodian embassy 's roof parties called him aside . Later , the Cambodian government was exonerated from any guilt . The waiter was hired from the same catering service used by every embassy in Washington . Taunting him and laughing , they cut into the base of his wings , flush with his back and down to the bone . That it didn 't hurt , frightened him more than if it had . Pain would have been preferable to the wave of nausea and dizziness that washed over him . I ran down the stairs to the front of the building . Jeremy lay on his back in the street , one leg twisted under him and both wings twisted and torn . In the air his instincts had taken over and he had tried to fly , at least enough to break his fall . With his wings already damaged , all he had managed to do was turn his fall into the worst possible landing . He was blessedly unconscious but as far as I could tell , he hadn 't hit his head . When one of the embassy officials ran out after me , I sent him to call for an ambulance and stayed next to my injured friend . The next several hours were very long and very worrisome ones but the only things I could remember afterwards were that Bethesda 's doctors were all very noncommittal and polite and that the waiting room was the nastiest shade of green I had ever seen . I was grateful that I had been so curious about the differences in the races . Several times , one of the doctors or nurses would come and ask me rather pointed questions , trying to figure out which types of medicine would be safe and how they might affect him . Finally they told me which room he was in and let me go in to see him . I tried to take heart at the fact that it wasn 't intensive care . He wasn 't awake when I came in . He was lying in his typical position , face down , but with a hideous difference . Both his wings had been amputated and his back was a wide swathe of surgical dressing . I controlled myself with an effort . I turned quietly and left the room to find the surgeon responsible . " His arms weren 't partially amputated already . Believe me , if I could have saved them , I would . Besides the rather crude attempt at cutting them off , he tore the muscles trying to use them . " The doctor sighed . It hadn 't been an easy decision to make and he knew he was going to have to justify it . Not just now , but probably for the rest of his life . And the most difficult person to justify it to was still under anesthesia . That , he was not looking forward to . " Yes ma ' am . But the bones were shattered by his landing on them and there was a severe risk that we wouldn 't be able to stop the bleeding in time to save him , never mind the wings . If his bones weren 't hollow , the fall alone would have killed him , but it does mean that they shattered very badly . Even if I had been able to save them , he never would have used them again . I did the best I could with what I had . " He hadn 't mentioned the lack of compatible blood , or familiarity with the anatomy of Angels , but I knew anyway . As it was , he felt more incompetent than he had since his first semester of medical school . I didn 't have the heart to badger him anymore . He was young and serious and probably good at his job . Besides , all the ranting in the world wouldn 't give Jeremy back his wings . I went to sit with him until he woke up . Jeremy didn 't really wake up that whole first day . Several times he opened his eyes and asked where we were , but the next time he would have forgotten and ask again . This allowed me to deal with my own anger and hurt some before he woke up ; I knew I wouldn 't have very much time to do so afterwards . I slept a little , sitting up in a chair and holding his hand but by the time he woke , I had already been awake for several hours . I sat watching him , remembering the last time I had watched him sleep , folded under his wing . This time , like that , his eyes fluttered then opened . " I remember falling off the roof … and what went before . I don 't remember landing . I don 't hurt , much , so it can 't be that bad . " I remembered an old saying of Grandfather 's . ' It 's no kindness to kill a man slowly . ' There wasn 't any easy way to tell him , stretching it out would only prolong the worst of it . At first , he seemed not to have heard me . Then he thought that he couldn 't have heard me aright . After my words had had time to sink in , he moved to try and bring a wingtip around . It was a gesture I 'd seen a hundred times and I could see the muscles of his back flex under the stitches . I laid my hand on his back . Jeremy stopped as commanded and relaxed . Then , in one swift fluid motion , he was standing . I reached to catch him automatically and he caught hold of my arms just in time to keep from falling . Belatedly , I realized that he wasn 't dizzy , he had overbalanced himself . Instead of sitting down again , he stubbornly walked to the mirror over the sink , maintaining his balance carefully , by concentration . His eyes in the mirror had the curiously unfocused expression of someone searching for something absent . All colour washed out of his face and he crumpled to the floor . I had been standing back and jumped to his side . A dry corner of my mind suggested that a sedative would have been very therapeutic right now , they should have been prepared . He shook my hand off without looking up , his face buried in his hands . He was humming and as I listened closely I could only understand a few words . They were arresting though , words like ' cripple ' , ' outcaste ' and ' exile ' . Jeremy took a deep ragged breath . " No , it isn 't . But neither is this . I hate your planet , with its thin stinking air and its heaviness and its crowds and crowds of people wherever you go . I wish I had never come here , never heard of any of you . I want to go home . " He was crying now , long tortured sobs and low keening . I wanted to hold him but was afraid of being rebuffed again . Then I remembered how very young he was and how very alone and far from home . I sat down next to him on the floor and pulled his head down on my shoulder . At first he fought me then clung to me until his crying quieted . " I can 't fly ; I am crippled ; I can 't fly … " That thought kept going around and around in my head . At first I didn 't really believe , couldn 't believe , that I no longer had wings . I didn 't think that it showed much in my manner until a week or so later when Sian stood me in front of a mirror . " No . If I leave you alone and don 't make you do this , you 're going to put it off as long as possible . The first step to getting better is to stop trying to pretend that nothing 's changed . " There were quite a few things that she gave me no choice about over the next several weeks . Even when I was sure that I could not do something , she was convinced that I could . And somehow she always won . I must have dismissed her a dozen times , except that she wouldn 't be dismissed . I spent much of my recuperation after that vibrating between anger and depression , neither of which did me any good . What Sian did not , could not know was how serious an injury this was considered by my people . Well , not my people any more . My parents probably would not disown me ; I hoped that they cared that much , but I was worse than dead to the rest of my race . There were , of course , others of my race who lost their wings through accident or injury . Most were immediately and mercifully put to death . Those that chose to live were interred in communities where their lack would discomfit neither themselves or others . I had never questioned this system before but now I found myself wondering just what kind of life these misfits led , now that I was one of them . Bethesda 's doctors finally let me go after some word of caution on everything from bathing to keeping my balance . I didn 't listen . I couldn 't have cared less about taking care of myself at the time . Sian listened and I am sure that some of the nasty things she did or made me do for weeks afterward were doctor 's instructions . In this the cultures were remarkably similar , all doctors have a wide streak of sadism in them . For me , returning to the embassy was something I dreaded . Not so much the structure or anything in it , but the communications link . I did not look forward to calling either my parents or the Wise Council with the news of what had happened . I decided to make the official call first so that if I broke down while talking to my parents I could go hide until I calmed without unfinished business hanging on me like a tether . To this day I can 't remember what was said on either side but I remember feeling almost cheerful when I messaged off . I had won the right to continue as ambassador , partly because it wasn 't considered an important position , rather like exile , and partly because it was thought that I would be at less risk than any other of the people . After all , I no longer had any wings to loose . That startled me . With everything else I had almost forgotten teaching Sian to understand my people 's speech . " I don 't think it 's that . " I replied . " We are an insular society and reserved with outsiders . This " I said indicating my shoulders . " makes me an outsider , of sorts . " " Not really . " I had to smile a bit . Sian started to say something then subsided . " In my culture it is believed that a major change in life creates a new person . It 's perspective , as when you were learning our alphabet . Until you saw it from the same perspective , you couldn 't understand it , not really . I now have a different point of view than I did before . I remember that view point but it is no longer where I am now . So after any major life change ; birth , flight , marriage and so forth , we tend to tread cautiously around this new person until the changes have manifested and settled . All my people will be a bit wary of me until they get to know me again . If any of them try . " It dawned on me what I should have realized before I spoke . I could not claim disability with her without also calling her entire race crippled . I cast about for some way to unsay what I had just said and found nothing . " Well ? " she said , then relented . " It 's okay . We weren 't ever supposed to fly so not being able to is normal . It isn 't for you , I know . But you 've got to stop thinking of what you can 't do anymore and concentrate on what you can . " Sian smiled at me . She knew I was changing the subject as well as I did but let me anyway . " Okay . I 'll be in the office if you need anything . " If you need me . She hadn 't said it but I heard it anyway . " Sian . " She stopped and looked back . " Would you stay ? " Suddenly she felt like my family and the people I had to call felt alien and strange . My mother answered then just stared at me , not saying anything for a long time before she called my father . When he came he spoke before he looked . " Jeremy ! How are you ? We haven 't heard … " he stopped as soon as he saw me . After a second he shook himself and started again . " What has happened ? " The suddenly cool distance of his voice stabbed at me . My father nodded . " Yes . That would be best . " he paused . " I also have an odd message from your Uncle . I didn 't understand it when we received it and I don 't think I understand it all yet but it 's clearer . As it is for you , perhaps you will know . He said ' Tell Jeremy to call me when he stops feeling sorry for himself . This is nothing . And tell him not to take too long about it . ' " " That is all he said . Chalan never wastes words . " He stopped and waited . I could see my mother , needing to cry but unwilling to do so in front of essentially a stranger . Then in a warmer tone than he had yet used he said " Jeremy , I am sorry this has happened . Call your Uncle . He may be able to help you . " He lifted his hands in farewell and killed the connection . " Yes , mostly . He sees things that are not yet there or have passed away . Sometimes it makes him hard to understand but he is well respected . And always obeyed . " " So ? Neither can I but it doesn 't make me crippled . " She paused to see if I had anything to say . When I was silent she went on . " Disabled is a state of mind . If it 's a state of mind you can make a decision to think otherwise . So you 'll do things differently now . Doesn 't mean you can 't do them , just find a different way . " I know now why my people pull away from one who is changing . My perception had already shifted several times and this time I felt it shift . I could do anything , even fly , I just had to figure out how . Uncle Chalan answered almost before the chime . Sian was startled but I had known him since before my pinions were grown and expected him to be startling . His hair was iron grey now but his face was as stern and his eyes as black as I remembered . He stood with his unusual copper wings folded tightly as a backdrop . I sighed inside myself . " Hello Uncle . How are you ? " If I couldn 't ground him just a little I 'd never be able to understand him . " Too old and too busy for small talk , Small One . " The old nickname warmed me . " If you didn 't get over it on your own , at least you had the sense to listen to your pretty assistant . Tell her to quit hiding and come in view . Where are you , m ' dear ? " " Hum . A bit monotone but not bad . You almost sound like a fledgling . Don 't bother to put yourself out , however . I can understand your language even if I can 't speak it . " This was dissembling on Uncle 's part . He 'd taught me over half of what I knew of English , claiming all the while that it sounded like gargling glass . He 'd shifted his gaze back to me . " Don 't sound so unsure . If you are sure then you can . Uncertainty breeds failure . Don 't try , do . " He waited for me to say something . " Thought you hadn 't quite gotten out of you . Quit feeling bad . Be sure . Then fly , Small One . " He vanished but not before I had seen his hand signal , ' Love you ' . " No , not cruel either . He may be the only one in my family to whom this will make no difference at all . " I turned the conversation over in my mind trying to understand what Uncle had told me . " Yes , of course . Not many of my people have the skill but a few do . Except that it is not ' the ' future it is a likely future and can change . Some of your people can do this also , I 've heard . " The rest of the day and most of the next , I wandered about the house and grounds . Not really going anywhere , just moving so I could think clearly . I had wandered out into the walled garden where I used to exercise when insight struck me . Follow Uncle 's instructions exactly . I stood still and closed my eyes . ' Quit feeling bad . ' That was easier said than done until I remembered Uncle 's voice calling me ' Small One ' . So . Now I felt warm inside , a good feeling . Next . ' Be sure . ' . Again , easier said than done . I let my mind drift and eventually began to remember when I first began to know I could fly . Now , fly . I knew how , I had for years . It was an automatic thing , like walking or breathing . I heard Sian come out to the garden then her quick steps stopped short . I opened my eyes and found her staring at me . And no wonder . By not thinking about it , I was hovering about six inches off the ground . I landed rather ungracefully with a bump . " I already knew how to fly , I just remembered what it felt like . " A simplistic explanation but it had been so simple . All I ever had to do was believe that I could . I called Uncle Chalan that evening . I had found that , though I could fly , I tired very quickly and I would have to practice , flying a little farther each day . I also found that if I held Sian 's hand , she could fly with me with very little extra effort . " So what else is new Jeremy ? You 've been able to fly since you were six years old . " My face must have registered disbelief or something because he laughed . " You catch on quickly Small One . " He pulled a wingtip around to groom it . " Pretty , aren 't they ? But purely decorative for adults . By the time we are grown , our wings aren 't doing much more than that . We fly because we know we can . " " But why didn 't anyone ever tell me ? I mean , after the accident , no one said any thing to me about this and … " I asked , song tumbling over itself in my eagerness . " They have forgotten . We have been keeping the crutches of childhood because we believed we needed them . Only the littles need the extra support of wings to fly . When we are grown , the mind is all we need . " I was delighted to have a reason to take Sian home and show her my beautiful planet . She was rather less than enthusiastic . Travel home for me was not difficult but Earth did not want casual citizens visiting our planet and Sian was swamped under a mass of paperwork . She told me not to worry , it would all be done by the time I felt strong enough to go . It was not . It was not even visibly smaller and Sian was almost in tears from weeks of frustration . Finally I lost patience . I told her to bag it all up and come with me . As Ambassador , I had every right to an immediate audience with the President of the Planetary Coalition . I invoked it , along with diplomatic privileges for Sian so that she could accompany me . I stalked into his office and dropped the bag on his desk . I cut him off . " I don 't care what your country or your planet requires . As a person in my employ and resident of my planet 's embassy , my assistant is a defacto resident of my planet , subject to diplomatic privileges and immunity . " I turned to Sian . " Would you like to be a citizen of Heaven ? " I asked her . " It doesn 't require you to give up any other citizenship you hold except during a time of war . " " None . I told you , we don 't have very many people . All you have to do is tell me you want to become a citizen and all I have to do is say that you can . So it 's done . " I said . I favored him with the coldest look I could muster . " Actually , I can . It is well within my authority . Because your planetary government prefers to bog it 's decisions down with what I have heard quaintly called ' red tape ' does not mean that we must . You have absolutely no right to tell me what kind of procedures I must follow on internal affairs of my government . Sian now has all the credentials which my government requires and will be leaving with me to pay a visit to home . " I indicated the bag on his desk . " If you want this waste paper filled out , do it yourself . Good day . " I turned on my heel and left him gaping after me with Sian right behind . " I have never heard anyone told off so well . I wish I 'd dumped this in your lap weeks ago . And that fiction about having dual citizenship , that was priceless ! " I grinned at her . " That 's no fiction , I really do have that authority . " She gaped at me finally realizing that every thing I had said was the bare truth . " As to dumping it in my lap weeks ago , it probably wouldn 't have worked then . I was just afraid that he was going to keep you from going or make us both late . My uncle wouldn 't like that so I thought quickly . " " So you faced him down just so you wouldn 't have to explain to your uncle ? " She started to go off into gales of laughter again then stopped suddenly . " Is he that scary ? " " He 's Chalan . That doesn 't mean anything to you but it would to anyone from my planet . The ones who see are highly respected . He 's one of the few who could argue with the Wise Council and win . So even though he has no official position , he does have a great deal of power . My people tend to go by actual power than by titles . " " Yes , but he used to correct me when I was small . That sort of thing stays with you . Besides , we 're not going to disappoint him . At least , not if we hurry and pack . " She met my eyes and we both went to pack , very quickly . The interstellar trip was both very long and very short . Sian asked questions about everything and kept me from worrying over much about our reception when we arrived . I am not sure that at least half of her questions were not designed with just that in mind . " Uncle is something of a recluse and he is … distinctive . From time out of mind , copper wings have been very rare . " I explained in answer to her look . This reassurance helped me get from the landing to Uncle 's house . Then the strangeness caught at me again . On Earth it had not been so bad , there were stairs to the upper floors and the rooms all had too much furniture . Here at home the sparse furnishing , high ceilings and upper floors with no stairs all struck home again . If I had not learned how to fly again , the grief would have been crushing . As it was , everything served to remind me of my loss . I wish I could better remember my first impressions of Heaven , but everything was so strange I was overwhelmed . Everything seemed different . And all these incredibly beautiful people flying around and staring at us as though we had crawled out from under the nearest rock . I remember keeping a close eye on Jeremy but he seemed okay . Not exuberant , but he must have been hurting some . Chalan was gracious and brusk by turns . He seemed almost impatient with some very difficult concepts and patient as the earth itself about more simple things . All the structures seemed too delicate and aerial to be real , they didn 't look like they would hold a gnat . And there were no stairs or roads or sidewalks of any kind . Gardens were landscaped but there weren 't any fences or anything . The vegetation didn 't seem different , much ( I 'm no botanist ) but the animals were very strange . Chalan had a house pet called a ' thale ' , kind of like a cat or dog , that was affectionate . It was fur covered and wriggled when petted , making a low humming sound but it had six legs , tiny pin - sharp claws going in a straight line from paw ( ? ) to the first joint , of which it had three on each paw plus the shoulders , and eyes on the top of it 's head rather than the front . Chalan 's house was not so different but I found out later that a door on the lower level was an eccentricity which he had because of the thale . Most entryways were on the third level or above , to keep ground creeping animals out . Also , while I found it huge , rather like a warehouse designed by Escher on one of his strange days , it was small compared to Jeremy 's parent 's house . That was like a rabbit warren on three dimensions . The day after we arrived , Chalan knocked on my door before daylight . When I had hurriedly dressed and made my way to the " kitchen " ( which actually was not very different ) Chalan had already made ' somethings ' for breakfast and had , oh lovely ! , made tea ! When I tasted it I was surprised that it tasted just like Earl Grey … then I found out that it was , brought from home by Jeremy as a gift for his uncle . Jeremy himself seemed brighter , as he always did in the morning , but apprehensive . Chalan grinned at him over the tea , an expression that suddenly made me as nervous as Jeremy obviously was . " I am wondering what is next . You must have called me home for some reason . And I am guessing that it is only a small matter of time before you tell me . " Chalan laughed . " Well , yes . Don 't you think your parents should know about your discovery ? Not to mention others in your situation . Remember how angry you were that no one told you that you did not need wings to fly ? " Chalan shifted his attention to me and I was almost sorry I hadn 't kept still . " You won 't have time " he whistled at me . " You 've got your own things to do and they don 't include babysitting . If no one else can be found , I will go . Now finish up … a parental visit is in order this morning , I think . " To my surprise , Chalan insisted that we fly to Jeremy 's parents . I was still a bit nervous about it , but Chalan took my hand firmly and simply took off , leaving Jeremy to catch up . Which he did , and took my other hand . That made me feel better , Jeremy was familiar and secure . Jeremy 's parents were a lot surprised , a little glad and very scared by his new found ability . I was confused by their attitude … I would have expected them to be a lot glad and a little scared . Then , over the next few weeks I began to see it from their point of view . Heaven was a very structured world and change came slowly , with much deliberation , until now . Once he began , Jeremy 's experience dealing with ' aliens ' began to stand him in good stead . He brought his people around , a few at a time , then more at once to his point of view . He had a rather irrefutable argument when he would begin by flying into a conference so that they people he was dealing with either could deny that they had seen him or accept the truth . There was one group who believed him wholeheartedly from the beginning because they wanted him to be right so much . These were , of course , the flightless ones , relegated to benign concentration camps by the flying portion of the population . Jeremy spent most of his time with them initially , until most had learned to fly again . There were several for whom flight was not possible . Most were simply too young to have developed the ability to do without wings … they would grow into flight , being only a few years later than most . But one man confused Jeremy and himself completely . He had never been able to fly , even though there was nothing wrong with his wings and he was quite old enough to do so in any case . " This had to happen eventually . There is no reason he cannot fly … except that the part of his mind that allows it is not there . " Chalan told him . " No . The corollary that it is a part of your mind that allows you to fly without wings is that , very occasionally , there will be a person born without it . The humans don 't have it , after all . " he said . " Doesn 't matter . I 've never been able to fly and , besides , you 've still opened up a whole new career for me . " " Well , you are needed here , very much . It will take a generation to finish what you have begun . But we still need an ambassador to Earth … and I think I am better qualified by reason of my lack of flight than anyone else . " Soork grinned again . " Chalan , a word in your ear … " They went off together and , when I returned to Earth , Soork came with me as the new ambassador . I saw him from time to time but I had to resign my position as personal assistant . Though I liked Soork and I kept in touch with him , and Jeremy and Chalan , Jeremy 's discoveries had started me thinking about the way we handled physical therapy for ourselves . So , in short , Jeremy taught what he learned on his planet and I applied the principles to our own world , with a fair amount of success . Chalan shook himself from his half - doze and smiled at the ring of small bright faces clustered around him . He was very old now and even the bright copper of his wings was greyed . He stretched and murmured slightly at the stiffness , then settled into his role , perhaps the most important one he had ever had , and began . " Once upon a time there was a young man who happened to have the misfortune to loose his wings . But because he would not be crippled , he learned to fly again anyway … and changed the world forever by doing so . And it happened just so … " |
Much to Chico the monkey 's dismay , the chicas locas were off again after a night 's stay at Atalaya Lodge . I tried to offer him apples as a parting gift ( i . e . left - over apples Carla had forced upon us when we left the MLC ) , but he took a bite from one , threw it on the ground , and gave me a look of disgust . I sighed and one of the " pirates " came up to us and pulled out a banana from behind his back . Chico lunged at him and consumed the fruit within moments . " Yeah , this monkey is spoiled , " I thought to myself . " A year with humans and he 's already picky about his fruit . " I took the apples to Gabriela in the kitchen who gratefully accepted them . I tried to warn her that Chico had already done a number on one of them , but she didn 't seem concerned and placed them all in the icebox . " No problem . Muchas gracias , Tina . Visit again ? " After a twenty - minute drive and a two hour walk in the heat down a dirt road , we arrived at Queros in record time . It was … empty . With the exception of Eddie , our guide , and his friend , no one else was around . A bare lawn between a set of houses made me think of an abandoned school playground over summer vacation . That is if the school playground had been overrun by chickens . I laughed to think that I was just reflecting on how nice it was to be back in civilization again , and there we were in a village where the foul were more plentiful than inhabitants . Eddie and Dioni took us to a wooden cabin at the entrance of the village . After my experience with Reynaldo , I was expecting squat toilets and cockroach - friendly accommodations , so I was pleasantly surprised to find that we had a REAL toilet , REAL beds , REAL walls , and wait for it … electricity . Really . Mind you , they only ran the generator for two hours at night , but hey , after a month of living in complete darkness at night , a couple of hours of synthetic light felt like an extravagant luxury . In fact , I was a little suspicious of it . It was blindingly bright , just glowing away when it wasn 't even necessary . So in your face . So flashy . Still , I was glad to finally charge my camera which had died out halfway through our Atalaya experience . After our long walk , all of the girls including myself were too exhausted to move . I felt obligated to go talk to Eddie and find out more about his community , but I couldn 't help it , I was so tired , so I collapsed on my bed with the rest of the chicas locas in our room . By that point , all of the volunteers had gotten bitten on nearly every inch of flesh , so we passed around the cortisone cream like it was a peace pipe , taking relief in its soothing chill . " Chicas locas , " we heard from the dining room . Dioni , who had survived ten days in the forest eating nothing but leaves , probably thought we were the biggest sissies of all time . " It is time to get up . We are going to make jewelry and baskets with the women now , okay ? " We quietly groaned and dragged ourselves out of bed . Outside , the women had already gotten started . They threaded beads onto strings and wove baskets out of thin , bendable leaves . An elderly man was polishing a smooth arrow with macaw feathers protruding out the end . " Girls , the woman pokes holes in these seeds and puts them on the string , " Dioni told us . " You can try now . " We began to make our own necklaces and bracelets while Dioni and the woman told us the different seed names : sera sera , walking palms , and huayruro seeds - the luckiest , most sacred seeds of the Amazon . The red of the seed symbolizes the earth , and the black represents all life . Drape yourself in these seeds , and you will be protected against evil and attract abundance . Once I had finished , I tied my necklace around my neck , but even the huayruro seeds couldn 't prevent was soon to come . Dioni asked us if we wanted to escape the heat by going to the river . Erica and Hanako wanted to relax in the room , so Sarah and I joined him . Sarah just wanted to take pictures , so she sat on the bank as Dioni and I tried to find a safe place to swim . The water was frigid . The current tugged at my legs . " Are you sure about this ? " I asked Dioni who was already several yards ahead , diving into the cold waters and laughing . " No problem ! Come , Tina , " he called out to me . I followed him but kept my feet on the ground . I looked back at Sarah who was barely visible close to the horizon . I turned back , shivering , took a breath , and dove in . Ice . I imagined the blood in my veins congealing . As cold as it was , the current was not as intense as it looked . " You see ! " Dioni laughed . " No problem ! " I laughed too and started doing the backstroke against the rushing water . No problem . After a few minutes , Dioni swam to another bend in the river . He turned toward me and motioned for me to follow . I decided to walk there again . I didn 't want to take any chances with this river . Once I got close , I felt the current turn colder and stronger . My foot met a large rock jutting out from the bottom of the riverbed , and I tried to readjust my footing , but it was too late . That one misstep sent me backwards , and before I knew it , I was being dragged along the river on my back , unable to stop myself . It was just for a few seconds close to the bank of the river , and I laughed , not taking what was happening seriously , but looking back , I remember how strong the pull of the water was - a siren impossible to resist . " Give me your hand ! " Dioni called out over the roaring water , and I reached out to him . He grabbed ahold of me and pulled me out . He laughed . A fish out of water . " Dioni , you quite possibly just saved my life , " I said somewhere in between sincerity and jest . What had just happened ? Was that real or had I imagined it ? The sun was going down . We found Sarah where we had left her , beginning to look very bored . " I saw you out there , but then you disappeared for a bit , " she said . " Well , yeah , " I squirmed . " I kind of , possibly , almost drowned out there , so that 's probably why you didn 't see me . " When we returned back to the community center , it was time for dinner . Now this is my speed , I thought . Food . Delicious and filling food . Nothing to fear . The main component of the meal was yucca - the most common food in the Amazon , and sadly , the most boring food in the world . It has the carbyness of potatoes without any of their buttery goodness , and it leaves your mouth dry and your body constipated . The other dish we had was palmito . It 's the inside of a palm tree , and tastes surprisingly like buttered corn . I . Loved . It . " Señora , this is the most delicious food I 've had this whole month ! " I beamed at the cook . She smiled and offered me more . I ate seconds . I ate thirds . I had three glasses of banana juice and some water from the tank that was deemed safe by our guide . Now I was content . All the heat exhaustion was gone and my bites were even itching less , and a vague sleepiness settled in my bones . " Chicas , " Dioni addressed us . " Now we are going to a bonfire with some of the Wachiperi . They will show some typical dances and typical songs and tell some typical stories for us , okay ? " Okay . We were sleepy , but we could swing this . How often do you get to experience the culture of an Amazonian community , anyway ? Eddie lit the fire in the traditional way , by rubbing two pieces of wood together , representing the meeting of the male and female . Then he offered us a drink called chuchuwasa . " It 's very good . Strong , " he said . I took a sip . It was strong alright . The older man told Dioni in Spanish with a Wachiperi lilt that he should translate his stories for us . In the first , there was a man named Ananewa who was the strongest of the Wachiperi . He would fight with jaguars and win . After the man died , the people of the village began to name their sons Ananewa out of respect . Until . All of the jaguars began to come after these boys and kill them . You see , the name had become a challenge to the jaguars . This is the reason why the Wachiperi never name their sons Ananewa . To do so would be to guarantee their untimely death . And apparently , there hasn 't been a strong man in Queros ever since . The next one had something to do with a fox and a fire . Firefox ? I tried to concentrate , but couldn 't manage it . All I know is that the stories came fast and furiously , with lots of repetition and lots of reprimands . " No , you 're not translating right , I know , " the man would say to Dioni . " Uy , no , no , no . " The stories went on and on . We were too tired to focus on discerning the man 's Wachiperi tinged Spanish or Dioni 's English , so we all sat there , smiling and nodding , not understanding a word . When it was time to leave , we thanked the men and dragged ourselves to bed . I was so happy to finally sleep . Such a long day . Such a long , long day . Something stirred in my belly . I turned on my side . My stomach growled . I turned to my other side . Nope . I wasn 't going to let a little stomach ache stop me from sleeping . As I was drifting off , my stomach spasmed like an alien was trying to break through . " Oh , no , " I whispered as I instinctively jumped out of bed and ran to the outhouse . A frog was perched on the toilet seat , staring at me with huge , buggy eyes . " Oh no . Oooooh no , " I said , opening the door to give him a path of escape . Any other time , I would have flipped out and ran to grab my camera , but not . right . now . I turned back to the toilet . He sat there watching me . " This is my toilet ! " I said , shooing him away , my stomach seizing . He didn 't move . I took my shoe and poked him . He hopped off and disappeared . " Where did you go ? " I said , checking inside the commode just in case . My stomach seized again . " I don 't have time for this , " I told the phantom frog and slammed the door . Eight hours and many trips to the bathroom later , I determined that I must have food poisoning . I cursed the palmito that I had loved so dearly just hours before . But then I remembered the water I drank . It had something floating in it . Something white . I ran to the bathroom again for good measure . After a few weeks of living in the Amazon , it was getting to be more and more ironic and ridiculous that I 'd never gone on a camping trip . Ever . That problem was soon to be remedied one Sunday afternoon . Juvenal gave us a set of options of where to stay , and we picked a site that wasn 't too close but not too far from the MLC . Carla and Alcides had made us boxed dinners to take with us since it would still be too wet to make a fire in the forest . Carla chided us for not consuming enough fruit and forced us to stuff our packs with more than we could eat . Juvenal came with us , while the rest of the staff stayed behind along with Juanma , the project director who had recently arrived from Cusco . Covered in tattoos and smelling of vanilla , he struck me as a magical , expansive being like a soft - hearted pirate from a children 's book who seemed to levitate rather than walk . Once we arrived at the site , we set up camp . And by we I mean Juvenal did his thing while we looked on . In ten minutes time , he had created a hobbit house using nothing but a machete and jungle brush . Then we put up the tents - one for Sarah and me , another for Erica and Hanako , and one for Our Fearless Leader . Honestly , I 'm surprised he used a tent at all . I half expected him to scale a tree and sleep on a limb with one eye open , just daring a jaguar to come and find him . There wasn 't much to do , so we decided to have a little photo session . We started out in the mouth of our hobbit cave . After a few photos , I began to feel something tickling me under my shirt and in my hair . " Oh no … oh no , " I squirmed . Ants . Ants in my pants . Red ants had crawled onto the hat hanging around my neck and traveled down my body . I started to wiggle and writhe , and that 's when they began to bite . It felt like some sadistic maniac was pricking me with a needle . I stripped off my overshirt and did some kind of spastic anti - ant dance to get the little critters off of me . Meanwhile , the chicas locas were having a laugh and taping the entire thing . Finally , I shook off all the angry insects and breathed a sigh of relief . " Please , jungle . Stop trying to kill me , " I thought . So it was just me and Rambo in the middle of nowhere . Juvenal mostly refused to speak in English which suited me fine because I wanted to practice my Spanish anyhow . I knew how much he was understanding by watching his left eyebrow . If it was raised particularly high , then I knew I wasn 't making a lick of sense . " Do you know any stories about Chulian Chaki ? " I asked him . He laughed . " Siii . Muchas historias . There was a man who lived in these parts years ago . He was a logger . Chulian Chaki was very angry with him . He wanted him to leave his forest forever , so he made a deal with him . They would fight . If the man won , Chulian Chaki would show him a grove of hardwood chiwawakos . If Chulian Chaki won , the man would never show his face again in the jungle . And so they fought . They fought for a loooong time . Finally , the man won . Chulian Chaki had to show him the grove of the tallest , most beautiful trees . The man began to chop them all down . He became rich off the wood . But he was not happy . One day he went into the forest and never touched another tree . That is the story . " And there is another . A man was lost in the jungle . It was raining and there was a bolt of lightning that lit a path before him . He followed the trail all the way to a small house in the middle of nowhere with a woman standing in the doorway . " The man had hunted , so the woman offered him a place to cook his meat . He was a little wary , but he was so hungry , so cold , and the woman was so beautiful that he gave in . He cooked the meat and spoke with the woman . She was very kind . They laughed together . That night he put his arms around this woman . She was warm and very much real . " In the morning he woke up and found that he was wrapped in the branches of the sacred lupuna tree ! There was no woman and no house to be seen . " I considered this for a minute . " But why ? " I asked . " Does Chulian Chaki just mess with people for fun ? Or was he protecting the forest ? " " No one can understand Chulian Chaki , " Juvenal said matter - of - factly , staring blankly at Lukumayo river . " He does what he wants , who knows why . " " Have you … seen him ? " I asked . Rambo chuckled . " Chulian Chaki shows you what you want to see . Once I was hunting , " he continued . " A deer came out of nowhere . She wasn 't very big . I shot her in the shoulder . And then in the neck . And two more times . Nothing . She wasn 't hurt at all . She kept running deeper and deeper into the jungle . I followed her for some time , but she never slowed down . I 've never seen anything like it . I remembered just in time that she might not be a deer at all . " We were silent for a little while . It was dark already and the girls hadn 't gotten back yet . " Are you ever afraid when you 're alone in the forest ? " I asked . " Yes , " Juvenal whispered and then was silent again . Suddenly , I heard a strange drone emanating from the forest . " Juvenal ? " I turned to him , but he was staring far off into the forest , his hand to his mouth . " Juvenal ? " I asked again , a little more worried at his empty expression . Then I realized that the sound wasn 't coming from the forest , but from a small mouth harp he was playing . I sighed in relief and silently laughed at my anxiety . " What is that ? " I asked . " An icarro , " he replied . I later found out that this was actually a dan moi , a Vietnamese instrument not even close to being native to Peru , but I accepted his answer at the time . " When I feel like eyes are watching me , I play this so I will be in harmony with the jungle . " He smiled and handed me the instrument , instructing me on how to play it correctly . I thought it was the coolest thing , and ever since then I have lusted after that musical instrument . Good night and good luck Finally , the girls returned , laughing because they had heard some kind of growling in the forest and began to have the feeling that they were in some low - budget horror film . We ate our chicken and rice by the river , and once we 'd finished , Juvenal asked us if we wanted to go for a night walk . The girls were tired from their walk back , so they opted to watch Jersey Shore back in their tent , so it was just me and Rambo again . " There won 't be many animals out tonight , " he said . " There 's a full moon . " He jokingly threw his head back and howled . " You know , if you swim when there 's a full moon , you will get good energy , " he told me . " Yeah , " I retorted , " but then you might get eaten by a caiman , so I 'm not really sure if it 's worth it . " He chuckled and walked into the forest . He paused , remembering something . He turned to me and put his finger to his lips . " Silenico . Quiet so we can hear the animals . " I nodded and followed . I had never heard the forest so silent . Here and there we heard a bamboo rat wailing , but other than that - nothing . We came to a shallow river and Juvenal froze . He thrust his hand into the water and pulled out a small , gray fish . It 's beyond me how he managed to see the animal let alone catch it , but I unquestioningly took the fish into my hand and stroked its slimy scales . I let the creature go , and we carried on walking for about half an hour . We came to a fork in the path and Juvenal left his hat hanging on a branch by one of the trails . He looked slightly confused . " Don 't tell me we 're lost , " I thought . Happy thoughts . Happy thoughts . If Juvenal had survived 3 days lost in the jungle , I 'm sure he could handle a little night walk . We came to a broken bridge that we crossed by balancing on one beam . We heard a rustle . " Espera . Wait . " Juvenal said and disappeared , diving into the water - filled ditch we had taken such great care to cross . A strange calmness took over me once I was alone . I didn 't feel like an intruder , but rather part of the fabric of the forest . I waited for some time , wondering what Juvenal was hoping to find . He finally emerged from around the corner , wading through the water , tight - lipped and disappointed . " Just a baby . " he sighed . " A baby what ? " I asked . " Caiman . " he confirmed . So there was a mama caiman traipsing around here somewhere . " I wanted to see an adult , " he said , mirroring my thoughts . We started heading back to the camp site . We came to a fork in the path and I began walking down the right - hand side toward Juvenal 's hat looming in the distance . " Tina ! " Juvenal barked . I turned around to see that he was nowhere in sight . I backtracked and saw that he had gone down the other trail . " But your hat … " I began . " My hat 's not there , " Juvenal dismissed . " But - " " Vamos . Let 's go . " he grunted . I didn 't want to argue , so I followed him . Soon we came to another fork in the path , and sure enough , there was his hat where he had left it . He put it back on without a word . Strange . I could 've sworn I saw it by the other path . I was so sure . Finally , we were back at the campsite . After sitting by the river for a bit , we went to our respective tents and settled down for the night . Maybe it was because I was so tired , but the ground felt incredibly comfortable . We awoke the next day and returned to the MLC to find that the staff had discovered a venomous snake in our roof while we were gone . " Ustedes tienen suerte , " Carla said somberly . We are lucky . We stood there on the beach with a telescope and a set of binoculars facing a orange - colored cliff . A few minutes passed and there were no birds in sight . Finally , a set of blue headed macaws came into view , and then dozens of birds followed suit . There were macaws , parrots , and parakeets of all different colors and sizes . Again , I couldn 't tell the difference , so others did the identification while I recorded them for some time . I 've always considered myself a bird person , but seeing them at that kind of distance isn 't exactly exciting . Within a half hour , we occupied ourselves with other pursuits . I chatted up Dioni - he told me how he had once climbed a 50 meter tree ! - and Erica and Hanako took to spying on the tourists who had gathered farther down the river with the telescope . Suddenly they burst into laughter . The group seemed to have gone crazy - whacking each other with articles of clothing , running around like lunatics , and even stripping down in some cases . What was going on ? A swarm of horseflies must have descended on the tourists , and as Erica and I had found out from our own horsefly attack not too long ago , those little bastards hurt . Within a few minutes , the tourists had picked up shop and left the vicinity , much to Erica and Hanako 's dismay . Back at the MLC , there was more work to be done . Juvenal collected us after lunch and took us down to clean and fix the pitfall traps . Unlike the traps we had set before , these were buckets that had been buried in the ground so that small mammals would fall right into the holes as they were running along the trail . Sadly , the only animal we later found in these traps was a large toad that had probably eaten all the small mammals in the traps . So much for that . We had more success with sewing the butterfly nets back in the project room . Well , some of us did . Juvenal , of course , was the first to finish while I slowly struggled my way through , managing to break a needle in half , leaving the pointy end jutting out of the net forever more . As I got a new needle and continued to relentlessly jab myself , our fearless leader began to tell us the best kind of stories : jungle stories . Juvenal went hunting in the forest one day . He found a troop of spider monkeys and followed them deep into the forest . By the time he shot one down and flung it over his shoulders to take home , he had completely lost track of the trail . He didn 't panic . He knew how to live off the forest . He ate leaves and berries off the trees . He made a shelter out of the brush to keep warm and hidden from the night animals once the sun had gone down . He survived the night and awoke the next day hopeful . He tried to find a stream or river to follow back to civilization , all the while clinging to the dead monkey draped around his neck . As he walked , everything began to look the same . Little did he know he was walking in circles . The second day ended and Juvenal once more fell asleep in the brush , his stomach growling and objecting to all the foliage he 'd been eating . He survived another night . He began to trek through the forest , and in the spur of the moment , decided to change course . After a few hours , he heard the sound of running water . He ran toward it and breathed a sigh of relief . He had found a river . He went downstream until he came upon a barking dog . He laughed out loud from happiness . If there was a dog , there had to be a person nearby . Soon enough , the old woman to whom the dog belonged came into view . In a rush of emotion , Juvenal ran toward her . He must 've been a frightening sight , dirty and crazed , with a dead animal on his back , because she turned on her heal to go back from where she came . Juvenal didn 't lose hope . He calmly approached her and poured out his story to her . She took pity on him and took him to her town where he was given food and a place to stay until he made his way home . He was saved . Juvenal 's story reminded me of something Lilia had mentioned during dinner the night before , her face mischievous and grinning in the candlelight . " Chulian Chaki , " she had said " is the spirit of the jungle . I don 't believe this . But . He calls your name and you go in the forest and ' poof . ' You are gone . " Chulian Chaki : an entity to be feared and respected . While most of the scientists who come to the jungle dismiss such myths , many people who live in and have grown up in the forest adhere to the belief that such a creature exists . " What does he look like ? " we had asked . " He has the foot of a deer and the foot of a turtle , " Lilia giggled . We laughed at that . Not exactly a scary combination . " But , " she whispered , " he can change . He can look like any animal . He can look like your best friend . He speaks to you in the voice of someone you know so you will trust him . " I asked Juvenal to tell us what he knew about this spirit of the jungle . He recounted what Lilia had already told us , but there was more , some other story he hadn 't disclosed yet . " Otra vez . Another time , " he said . The nets were finished , so with that , we left the project room while I pondered what had happened with Juvenal and Chulian Chaki . As the sun went down and moon came out , I thought about how ambiguous and changeable everything was . Even the moon looked different in this hemisphere - the craters turned in such a way as to give the appearance of a large rabbit or an old man with a mustache . I smiled . Nothing is constant . Nothing is as it seems . At the mercy of nature , I realized how little control we have over our world . As individuals we certainly have power , but at the same time , we are all passengers on the same train moving toward some unknown destination . So far , I was enjoying the ride . When I was younger , I had chicken pox twice . The second time around , I tried my best not to scratch , but finally gave in , clawing at spots that left marks in their wake . Laying in my bed awake at night in the middle of the jungle , I felt like that itchy third grader again . I couldn 't help it . After the fifth time of waking up because of the red , angry bites covering my entire body , I finally succumbed and had a scratching free for all that lasted a good ten minutes . Meanwhile , a thunderstorm raged in the background , and for a second I considered stepping out into the rain to soothe my raw skin . I was really happy to be integrated into the group , though it was a little strange not having Tilman to greet us in the morning with his usual milky hot chocolate and itinerary for the day . Nelson was missing too , gone to Salvación because of a toothache . Still , most of the staff was at the table , chowing down on omelets and the ever popular fried bananas . Sarah stealthily transferred her bananas to my plate which I gladly accepted . I freaking love fried bananas . It made me chuckle to see the way several of the men including Alcides , the cook , fawned over our " Fearless Leader , " Juvenal , staring at him with adoration and laughing at all of his man jokes . I glanced at Lilia and she smiled . " Now Tilman 's gone and you 're going to do some real work , chicas locas , " she said , giving a girlish giggle . Come to find out in the next few days , she wasn 't kidding . We spent the day planting and measuring trees as per usual but in a different part of the forest . Expecting a well - maintained plantation like the last , I was surprised when a demolished grove came into view . The trees had been burned down , which unfortunately has become a common deforestation method . Deforestation And so we began the long , painstaking process of recovery . Reynaldo had taken it upon himself to teach me as many plants of the forest as possible , so he would periodically test me on the trees we were planting there . He is that rare type of leader who shows the way through kindness , patience , and consideration . Not one to complain or criticize , I never heard him once blame anyone for the plight of the forest . Anyway , nothing much else happened the rest of the day . That night I slipped into my old habit of doing my laundry at night . Just as I was putting my clothes on the line I heard growling . I jerked my head up and looked into the dark of the forest . Nothing . Must 've imagined it , I thought . I continued to place my clothing on the line . Another growl . I dropped my underwear in the dirt . I looked into the canopy again . Probably a potoo bird that sounds like a jaguar I thought . I quickly shook the dirt of my undies and hightailed it out of there just in case . |
Molly and Me by Norman V . Kelly The retirement party for my father was winding down . The speeches had been made and the gold watch presented . I was bored and ready to go home . My dad might be retiring , but he would still find plenty to do knowing him like I do … I was sure of that . I started to walk over to say goodbye when I saw her ! She seemed to come from nowhere and there she was kissing my father on the cheek and smiling at him like she was a long lost daughter . I hurried over there as fast as I could . " Nolan , " my father said with that little grin of his , " You see something that interested you ? " I talked to my dad but my eyes were on the beautiful lady . " You old fox , I always knew you kept the beautiful ones hidden . " " Molly Sprague this is my rogue son , Eric Nolan , everyone calls him Nolan . " Her full attention was on me and I swear the old heart skipped a beat . She put out her hand and I held it until my dad gave me one of his looks . " Hello , Molly , did you just get here ? I certainly did not see you before now . " Miss Molly was truly gorgeous . She had long , beautiful brown hair , and eyes that sparkled . There was a little wrinkle around her nose when she smiled and I liked her instantly . My dad grinned at me . " I 'll save you some time Nolan , Molly is brilliant , beautiful and single . She is out of your class … so take a deep breath . " He slapped me on the shoulder . " Look out for him , Molly . " " Oh , don 't worry , if he is your son I guess I better start carrying my gun . " There was that smile again . She was truly breathtaking . We stood together , the three of us making small talk . Finally my father was called away . I laughed at her as she took my arm . ' Well you got that dingy part right . " I Left her at a table that had a view of the lighted golf course and raced over to get her drink . I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself … you know how fast I moved . As I waited I chastised myself . Wait a minute … she came to see me . I bet it 's just all business and she is engaged to a billionaire … something like that . I got back to her table without spilling her Manhattan and sat across from her . " Over here … come on over here next to me Nolan . I want this to be confidential " There it was , ' confidential ' where in the world can a fella find romance in that damn word ? " Sure … sure Molly , whatever you say . " She held up her glass … we clinked and she sipped . I had a Budweiser and clinking with a beer bottle just don 't have much class … if you get my meaning . " Nolan your dad and I are pals . I worked in the office but had no connection with him . One night he locked his keys in his car and I rescued him . Since then we have remained close friends . He has given me some great advice , not only in finances … of which he is a genius , but boy friends , you know father daughter stuff . We talked a lot about you and I always wanted to meet you . So here I am . But , I have a business proposition for you and I hope we can become partners … so to speak . " " Well , hell , I like that partner part . My dad mentioned you … well he said he knew this beautiful woman that one day he would arrange to have me meet . But … well it never happened until now . " " Good . Well since you don 't know anything about me I 'll give you a very quick run down . I lost my parents when I was a baby . My Aunt Sara raised me . In fact she always told me that I was a ' special gift ' from heaven and that she would teach me everything she knew about the mysteries of being a Gypsy . " " No silly . That has to do with a religion down in New Orleans . No , my aunt read palms , dealt Tarot Cards , read fortunes , looked into the future and all that jazz . She made a wonderful living doing that and by the time I was twelve I was as good at most of those things as she was . We traveled all of the United States and many places in Europe . Over there we traveled with a caravan , it was the most exciting time of my life . After she died , I just changed my name and kept the business going to this day . Now I have a beautiful home , a lot of money and I work out of my house . I have an area in my home where I meet my guests , and I have a good reputation . You getting all this Nolan ? " She reached over and slapped my hand . " No … Rambo … nothing like that . This business I have meets all the requirements of the laws here in Peoria , Illinois . I make a lot of money . I pay my taxes and I help a lot of lonely and confused people . I am no psychiatrist … no therapist , but I help my clients . Many of them have been with me for years . " " We had that talk . I am his only son and he has told me repeatedly that when he dies I 'll be rich . You know Molly I would rather make it on my own . If he leaves me a lot of money … so be it … but until then I am exactly what you see … I am no Mike Hammer wannabee . " " Do you have to go to school to be one of those ? I can tell you right now I do not believe in ghosts , spirits , Heaven , Hell or the here after . It is all phony and I cannot believe that people still fall for that BS . " " You 're dad told me you were opinionated . That 's fine with me . I don 't believe in it … not even one little bit . I mean none of it . But it is a great business to be in … if you have no skills , and that defines me . " " Great ! That 's what I was hoping for . See , Nolan my clients begin by calling me . If someone comes to my door I will not answer it . I always demand that they call . It is on my business card . Here look at this . " That 's funny … hell , I spend most of my time soliciting business from phony lawyers , known criminals and married people that want me to follow their spouses . God … what a business . Still , where do I fit in ? " " Never mind that , I 'll take care of that . It is important that you are able to commit a lot of time to this . Therefore for the first 90 days I will put you on a retainer … but I am asking for very prompt response . Think you can do that ? " " Oh , hell yes ! Everyday I go into the office and look at my calendar and wonder what I 'll do the whole damn boring day . I do have a few reliable clients , but it has been pretty tough . I often think abut calling my dad and taking one of those jobs he has offered me . " " I will if it helps me get the job . " There was that gorgeous smile again , and I hurried over for another round . I was getting somewhere with her , I was just not sure where that was . " Nolan when my clients call I quickly warn then not to tell me their names or anything about them . I immediately ask them if they would like to come in by appointment . . I tell them the first visit is free . I also tell them that everything we say is confidential and that I want them to be comfortable with me . Hell , it is such easy pickings that sometimes I am embarrassed . " " You can bet on that . It is amazing what these people give me in the way of information just that first day . I get them out in ten minutes … after all it is free , then I have my secretary set them up for at least six ' sessions ' and that is how it all begins . " " Well Nolan , without you all this slips away rather quickly . You see my clients … well clients of psychics want answers . Now these answers must be awe inspiring , not only spiritual … but accurate . I want you to be in a position to watch my house . I 'll give you all the schedules and you be outside watching those cars pull in my driveway . . You get the license plate numbers and run every kind of check on these clients … and potential clients that is known to man kind . Catching on are you ? " " Well now you are talking my language . Hell , to tell you the truth you can belong to web sites on your computer that would give you almost all the information you want to know . But … hey … don 't look a gift horse in the mouth I always say . " " I have no time to be waste on a damn computer and I certainly do not want my secretary to know anything about what I do . I always give my client a phony first name for her to open a file . I have all the information , the real name eventually but all that is kept in my personal files inside my office and stored in a very strong safe . Remember Nolan , everything that you get on them that they could never imagine me knowing is exactly what I want . Can you do it ? " " See there … I knew you were the right guy . This psychic thing is new , but I have been doing the cards , palms and other BS for over twenty years , so I think we 'll last for a long time . Want the job ? " " Oh … I forgot , I want you to discretely photograph their homes , check out the area . Do they have dogs or cats ? What kind of car do they have and just anything at all . Can you imagine , Nolan , me being able to tell you about your dog , maybe your license number , and the color of your house ? Can 't you just see it ? I would hope to get in on a police investigation once in awhile . Remember that Greta from Delavan ? " " I sure do . It was amazing . Hell , I listened to her and read some of her ' findings . As I said , I never believed in any of that and certainly not anything she said . People are so gullible and I am positive there is no such living person in the world that knows any more than any other person about all those things . " " Of course you are right . People want to believe in us and I just make it very easy for them to do so . Let 's get going . " I sat in my small office in Downtown Peoria , Illinois thinking over the incredible night talking to Molly . I guess I was thinking more of her goodnight kiss than I was about the business deal we had made . My the lady is generous and I looked forward to paying some bills , including the rent . The old car needed a bit of work done and to think that I could afford to rent a car while it was being repaired made me feel like a million bucks . I could up grade my computer and get a new pair of shoes . I wanted to meet with my cop friend . He would be taking a chance and I meant to make sure he was paid pretty well for his part in all this . I needed him to just tell me the name of the car owner , and I felt he could do that without too much problem . Hell , if that did not work I would just follow the client home and take it from there . The recorder 's office , the police files , the library … hell , I knew how to get the information . I would do my job and I was damn well certain Molly would do hers . Wow … to make some money , to be able to hire a tax guy , you know all those normal things like eating and having a drink . I had a romantic notion about Molly , but if that didn 't work … there were other fish in the sea , but you have to have something to bait the hooks if you get my meaning . What was that ? My God the phone was ringing . " Nolan . " " Hello partner , were you too excited to sleep last night ? " " Hello boss , slept like a baby , up most of the night crying and wetting my pants . " Hearing her laughter was invigorating . " You are funny Nolan . I got something exciting I think . Oh … by the way I hope to get a half - hour TV show on a local TV station here and this caper just might help . I need you to drive up to Benson , Illinois . A lady called and told me her son was missing and I want you to go there and take every kind of picture you can imagine . It could be a kidnapping , a murder , whatever it is I want to get in on this fast . Be sure to photograph any lakes or deep streams around there . Hell … this kid may have drowned and that my friend is a psychic 's bread and butter . " " No , that 's why our connection has to be confidential . Tell them you are a free lance writer , talk to people . Give me a written report and the photos . Oh , find someone out of town that will develop your photos … and … " " I have a very small lab in the house I rent . I have been a shamus for a long time and photos are my bread and butter . I just rented a car so that will help me in case neighbors get interested in me . I 'll Google that little town as well and get up there soon as I can " It was a very pleasant day as I drove over to Benson , Illinois out in the farmland of Woodford County . The 2000 census had 408 souls living in this little community but it is probably less now . They had a tiny gas station , two stores that included a hardware store . I pulled beneath the shade of a couple giant oaks and sat there looking around . A few cars , well , mainly pickup trucks parked on the street . I got out and walked over to one of the stores . I mentioned how sorry I was about the little boy missing and got some information from a clerk . I found out that the Woodford County Sheriff 's office patrolled the area but were rarely seen . I doubt the crime rate warranted even a Barney Fife , so I moved on . As we spoke a large search party was out combing the wooded areas . I talked to a couple young boys that new Bryan Fields , and they told me that they used to fish and swim in a couple of creeks and a few lakes just east of town . I went out and photographed every one of them . I drove over to the little boy 's house and through my telescopic lenses took some pictures of the house , the big Collie dog and the kid 's bike . Funny , I thought , had he gone off on his own wouldn 't he have taken his bike ? I did not want to talk to the kid 's parents so I found out that there were cousins in town so I stopped by every one of their homes . I told them that by talking to me maybe I could generate some publicity , maybe get the Peoria press and TV interested in the case . I left Benson with enough information to write a short book on this poor , missing kid . " My God ! Nolan these are incredible . I am going to take a chance and when I talk to this kid 's mom tonight I am going to tell her that her son is right here . " She stabbed her pretty finger nail into a spot that seemed to have a lot of brush growing out of the water . " It is gutsy to be specific , but I think I 'll go for it . Anyway they won 't blame me I am just trying to help a poor grieved family in Benson , Illinois . Also my friend over at the Journal - Star was tipped by a friend of mine so I might just get the publicity I need . If I am wrong … well … I 'll just take that chance . Great job Nolan , you have earned a bonus on your first caper . Remember my goal is to get my own half - hour TV show , and let 's hope this is the first giant step . " " No not yet . I plan to have Mrs . Fields do all that for us . After I tell her where her son is , I 'll tell her to call the 7 numbers I will give her . These are the media people here and the newspapers in Eureka . My friend in the JS will certainly want the TV stations in on this so all we have o do is sit back and wait . Havin ' fun yet Nolan ? " " Well , hell … maybe she is a psychic because late the next day eleven - year - old Bryan Fields was found in three feet of water , his overalls snagged on a sunken tree branch . I mean the TV and other media people were on this like stink on a skunk . It went viral on the internet and Molly was in the middle of all of it . It was sensational and I can tell you her beautiful face was all over the news . There was one shot of her hugging Bryan 's mother that was touching indeed . Sure the poor boy was dead but the news surrounding the entire thing was beyond description . The TV networks did a few spots of her out by the lake as well . I don 't even have to tell you what happened to her psychic business after all that . Truly awesome … as the kids love to say . I was stupefied to find out just how many fools believe in all the tripe that Molly was selling … but the line was endless . Of course she got her TV show . Now it was not prime time nor was it on the three big networks but she was on TV at 5 : 30 PM on WTVP , on Sundays there she was her and that face and that beautiful smile . She simply sat there on a couch , her gorgeous legs crossed talking to other people in her business , and of course guests that swear by Heaven above of the psychic powers that Molly had . I was certain that she would end up on Cable or even Fox News before it was all over . It was public television , but Molly had two sponsors that would contribute to the station so there she was . Hell … I never missed it . As for me I was busy six days a week and the money poured in . I quickly bought the house I was renting , upgraded my beat up car and lived very well … thank you . Molly and me had a romantic encounter once in awhile … if you get my meaning , and life was good … well , it was damn good . I was sound asleep , deep in a dream when the phone finally aroused me . " Hello . " My voice sounded like a dead man being dragged across a rusty tin roof . " Exato mundo my friend . That 's the one . Well his wife is coming over , you know Darlene … with her nose held high . That one . " We made small talk while I ate bacon and eggs , then took our Bloody Marys into her lavish office . " Nolan you will love this one , Mrs . Wellington wants me to tell her who her husband is having an affair with . Now that is right down your alley , right " So after talking to Molly I had a case that I could sink my teeth into . A wealthy man running around with another woman , that 's what I call a P . I . 's dream case . I spent the entire day gathering information on this very prominent citizen and that Friday I parked a block away from his office . Well , I mean his building . He had four automobiles and I had the rundown on all of them . I knew he was a distinguished gentleman , tall , stunning white hair that he probably had cut every other day . Hell , anyone in town that had an interest in money knew him so how on earth did he expect to get away with anything other than going to church with his wife ? He pulled out in his white Lincoln and drove past me . I pulled in behind him and backed off . A piece of cake I thought . A brilliant rich man that was so damn stupid I had to laugh at him . I had seen his wife , wow … what a knockout and here he was going after another woman . Jesus … these guys are stupid and they deserve the mess they get themselves into . He headed north on 150 and a mile out he signaled his right turn into a gas station . Funny he passed up the pumps and parked next to an old Ford parked away from the pumps . I smiled , hell I had seen this move before . Old silver hair thought he was the silver fox . A minute later he was in the Ford and heading north . Wow he was slick . We got off the expressway and pulled into a restaurant . I passed by then came back and parked as far away as I could get . Sure enough … a cute little yellow Volkswagen convertible pulled in next to the Ford . I zeroed in the camera and watched the gorgeous red head get out of the car . She was a knockout and any idiot would have known that the sly fox had captured this beauty . I drove past the cars got my pictures and of course the license numbers as well . I parked got out and walked into the restaurant heading for the counter . I could see the love birds in the mirror sitting together in the back booth . My God … do these guys all read the same how to cheat books ? Pathetic . She was a glamour puss , no doubt . They sat side - by - side and he was quite the entertainer , based on her laughter . I sipped my coffee and watched . Ten minutes later I sensed they were leaving so I hurriedly paid my tab and got back into my car . Off they went . He headed south again , pulled into the station and got back into his Lincoln . So stupid . Just how hard would it be for me to find out who owned the Ford ? If I thought this case was heading for court , I would have had all that documented long before I turned in my report . Instead I just made a note of the license number again and followed the Lincoln down to the Mall on Sterling and right into a business complex to a Red Roof Inn . Not very fancy , now was it ? I got out of the car and walked around where I could see the pretty women get out of the car and go inside . A few minutes later she came out and held up the keys to the driver . She smiled and jingled the keys . They drove around to a rear entrance and in they went . I took more photos before I gave up and got back in the car . The final shot was that silver haired boy of mine carrying his cutie into room 29 . What a great wedding shot that would have been huh ? God … I love my job . " Nolan you are the right man for the job . Seriously these are incredible photographs . Look at this one it looks like you could reach right out and touch her . " " Police say a woman now identified as Sandra Doubet was found dead in room 29 at the Red Roof Inn here in Peoria . Police say the maid discovered her body and police worked the entire evening identifying her and investigating her death . Police have no suspects at this time . Anyone that has any information should contact Detective Venice at the police station . " " My God … Nolan that 's her ! Molly was holding the photo of the red headed beauty . " You got that straight Molly . Now what the hell should I do ? " " Wait ! Hold on we are talking about murder . Jesus , Molly I have enough evidence to have Wellington in jail within the hour . I sure don 't want us sitting next to him if you get my meaning . " " I do … but let 's think about this for awhile . " She handed me a can of beer and walked around her office thinking … I suppose . Then suddenly she turned to me , pointing her finger at me . " You are supposed to be the detective so ponder this Sherlock . What time did lover boy leave the motel ? Did he leave alone ? Did the red head just stay in the motel and call up another one of her boy friends ? Is this lady a hooker ? After all what do you really know about this woman other than her name and that she has a little yellow car ? " " Hell , Nolan , those books are printed a year in advance . Listen … I have the opportunity of a life time here and I do not want to blow it . Let 's just cool it , see how the investigation goes . We can always anonymously mail all those photos to the cops . Stick with me on this . " " Me neither . Hell , this Wellingon is well known in town , I can imagine that already they know who rented that room , we have some sharp detectives . Let 's let ' em do their job , if they falter , well hell , we get the photos to them . I know the chief of detectives ; we 'll just mail them to his home . Is that a deal ? " I am thinking about what to tell Mrs . Wellington . I was ready to reveal what this lady looked like … maybe even her first name , but now that the dead gal is all over the news I 'll have to rethink this . Get outta here while I do some serious thinking . I 'll call you . " Yep , that is exactly what she decided to do . She played Mrs . Wellington with some pretty revealing stuff , but decided that she could get the most out of what she knew by playing a deadly game on her TV show . I sat there mesmerized as I am sure most of Peoria did as well . Molly was seen out at the Red Roof Inn , standing at room 29 , and then I 'll be dammed she was actually allowed inside the room that poor woman was murdered in . I know now what she meant when she said she had a friend who was the chief of detectives . God … it was heady stuff and as the camera closed in on her face she appeared to be in some kind of trance . As the camera neared she suddenly ' woke ' up . ' I have it … I have the face of the killer ! ' WOW ! She then sat on her couch and talked to the coroner and one other official . It amazed me how these fools could go on a psychic 's show … but there they were . The next morning there was that beautiful face plastered on the front page . They were playing up this brilliant woman for all it was worth . I tried to call her but it was three days later that she finally called me back . " Not really . See , the artist will alter his face a bit … oh hell yes , it will look a bit like him … but believe me pal … I will never say his name . You get it ? " I shook my head , got another drink . " Molly , what if Mr . Wellington decides to have you shot … or does it himself ? This will be dramatic stuff … how many shows will it take before you show the artist 's rendering of the killer ? " " Probably three … you know , I 'll milk this cow for all it 's worth first . Now remember Nolan … Wellington may NOT be the killer . So being as dramatic as possible , I 'll have the artist do a few sketches in front of the camera … you know tease the people . Then when I think it is right , well then I 'll reveal the face . I 'll conger up the eye and hair color , you know a guess at the age … stuff like that . The only thing I worry about is the police will arrest the guy before I get all that done " " That is not the only thing to worry about . What scares me , Molly , is the killer … whoever it is , might just be one of those nuts that believe all this BS and just shoot you . Do you even think about that happening to you ? " " Not really . Really , I don 't . After all I can look into the future and I can see me as an old lady pushing a shopping cart in downtown Peoria . " So we continued our little charade as if nothing was coming down the Pike that might kill my partner . Funny … we were not as friendly as we were but we still maintained our business relationship . The money was still pouring in and the town of Peoria was certainly gossiping about ' That pretty psychic on TV . ' True to her word , Molly had the artist on with his big drawing board and his colored chalk he used . As Molly lay on the couch she put her self in some phony trance . The artist sat near her and sketched as she talked . It was all pretty damn dramatic . Suddenly she would sit up and the artist would stop drawing . " Next week , " Molly said , smiling at the camera , " Some of my viewers might just know this man . This killer who is in my mind and he is living right here in Peoria , Illinois . We will have a special number you can call and I promise you one of the detectives on the case will talk to you . Also you can call the number on your screen if you would like to meet with me for a private and confidential talk … call me . Good Evening . " I saw Molly only twice , got my assignments and went about my business . I now had an interest in a divorced lady that lived next door to me and along with her little boy I began to have a very nice relationship . I worried about Molly , but decided that I could do nothing to change her mind and the course she was taking with the killer . Saturday morning I called , got no answer and tried two more times . I drove over to her house and knocked on the door . I rang the door bell and knocked again . No answer . I peeked into the garage and saw her two cars . I was getting a bit alarmed so I called her land phone and her cell phone . Still no response . I went around back and took the secret key from under the bird house and entered the rear door . " MOLLY ! " I walked through the kitchen still calling her name . Her big white cat came out meowing and demanding somebody feed him . I poured some food in his dish and headed down the hall . Her bedroom door was shut and I shuddered a bit before I knocked quietly on the door . " Molly … it 's Nolan . " I slowly turned the door knob and half entered the room . It was a bright sunny day but all the blinds were shut . I could see her form in the bed and I called out to her . " Hey … sleepy head … you okay ? " I walked over and pulled the drapes open … that bright light could wake a vampire in a second . I shook her foot . No movement . I tucked the sheet down from her face and froze in my tracks . I could see her bloated face , the sickening redness about her throat . Then I saw the thin red belt that had been pulled tightly against her windpipe . My friend Molly was dead ! I stepped out of the room as I got my wits about me . Then I panicked . I rushed off to her office for a look see . The place was is shambles with stuff tossed all over the place . The safe was open but that did not surprise me . Molly rarely slammed it shut stating that she could not always remember the damn combination . Fifteen minutes later I was certain that the Wellington file was long gone . That in and of itself proved to me that Richard Wellington was indeed the killer . I carefully walked about the house giving it a final inspection before I left . I left by the back door but not until I filled a kitchen rag with a detergent and wiped the door knob and the key clean . I shut the door and drove over to East Peoria and finally found a pay telephone . They are virtually extent by now . I told the dispatcher that there was a dead woman at Molly 's address and quickly hung up . Naturally I was not anxious for the police to find out my association with Molly , but I still was not worried . Molly always paid me in good old cash . I had no worker 's compensation , health insurance or anything really to tie me to Molly , so let them investigate . So … I was her friend . Let them fingerprint the entire house . Hell she had hundreds of people in and out of her place over the past months . I would just clam up … admit we went out together once in awhile . I am sure I would be a ' person of interest ' as they like to say today , but they had little to go on . So , I went to my private files in the lab and pulled out all the photos I had taken concerning Wellington and his lover . Surprised ? Ha ! Since day one every photo I ever took I made a duplicate set . Many times I turned them over to my clients but always had that backup file and pictures . Do I have to remind you that I was a genius ? I set about making myself another copy of the interesting photos and got ready to make my call . Hell , I was well supplied with cells phones from a friend of mine . These phones could not be traced and the moment I made the call I destroyed the phone . " Take these instructions down … this is my last phone call . I have a high powered rifle with a night scope … I see anyone or if I get nervous I will just kill you and anyone near you . Got it ? " I picked a spot down by the river where I used to fish . It had a big old tree near the edge and I intended to use that for my cover . The meeting was set for ten that Friday night . I took my big German shepherd with me and got there at eight . We wandered all over the place and then around 9 : 30 I put him back in the car and walked about one thousand yards to the tree . I didn 't have a rifle , but I did tuck my Glock in the shoulder holster and made my way up the tree . I had a pretty nice roost as I sat waiting . Right on time I saw the black Buick pull into the open space and park near the tree . I used my binoculars to glance around the place as the driver stayed in the car . Five minutes later I dropped down from the tree and stood in the shadows watching the car . I slipped away and stopped at the rear door of the four - door Buick . I pulled it open . I slipped back under the tree and used a tiny pin light to check the money . No bank ink trap and it looked like it was a lot of money so I shut the case . I left it at the tree and gathered up the photos and negatives , taking them back to the rear car door . I put the Glock 17 9mm pistol up quickly to his head just above the right ear and fired . He had no idea what hit him as the bits and pieces of his skull and brain splattered onto the side window . Quickly I took the weapon out of my gloved hand and fit it snugly in the bastard 's right hand . I then trotted over to the tree and grabbed the briefcase with the money and scampered off to my car . Storm was happy to see me and I promised him a MacDonald 's burger on the way home . THE AFTERMATH After I laid it out for the police there in Wellington 's car that evening the police finally pieced it all together . Just as a spectator I went to the coroner 's inquest , me and a lot of other people . I expected that phone call or that knock on the door from some detective but it never came . Of course the police ran down his girlfriend and all of that sordid stuff hit the newspaper and local TV stations . But like always the story faded away . They have a way of doing that about the time that another murder comes along . I decided to get out of the P . I . business and joined my father in a new adventure of his . I have a company car and spend my time calling on customers . Life was a bit dull without Molly and of course I never killed anyone before . I had my anxious nights but a year later I hardly thought about Wellington or Molly at all . I think I am in love with ' The girl next door , ' and I am anxious to see where that goes . Me and her son are great buddies . I don 't have to be a psychic to know that I should stay away from those dangerously beautiful women … you think ? Norm is a Peoria Historian and true crime author . This is a work of pure fiction from a retired private eye and a work of fiction . norman . kelly @ sbcglobal . net |
The most exciting news today is that my boss is currently in Copenhagen and has seen the first ten pieces of the hippo porcelain service that have already been produced . He is attending a ceremony at the opening of the new Royal Copenhagen Factory and will be meeting with the Danish Queen who has taken a personal interest in the hippos ! ! The Queen ! Today I took the train up from Olten to Karlruhe , where I stopped to go to the zoo before heading to Stuttgart for the night . I checked out of the hotel , walked to the train station and took just any train to Basel , knowing that something would connect out of there to where I needed to go . I got off in Basel , looked around and saw a train going to Frankfurt . Knowing that this was probably m train , but not quite really knowing , I went in search of an information desk and when I found out that it was my train , I had just missed . An hour later I was on the same train heading to Karlsruhe . It was a really nice train - super fast and huge , with its own restaurant and information booth in it ! I was impressed . I had a bizarre encounter with a man who asked me ( of course in German ) to save him a seat near me - he kept wanting to take my jacket away from me and I was so confused . I kept sort of looking at him like he was nuts , then going back to reading my new book . When this didn 't work , I finally realized that he wanted me to drape my jacket on the seats to save them for him . Ohhh , ok . So I did and he was happy . Came back a few minutes later , sat down and then was asked to move by the train conductor who told him that it was for people with disabilities only . My stop finally came and I got off , found a storage locker and set off for the zoo . I went to the information desk for the trams and asked for the zoo and she pointed across the street . Why , there is was ! Right across the street ! Perfect ! I walked up and sure enough , there was the zoo . They even had a hippo feeding time scheduled for 4 : 30pm . I was set . I got a leisurely lunch at the restaurant just outside the zoo , paid my bill and went in . I found the hippos after a big of a confusion reading the map and had to push my way through people just to get a view . I made my initial assessment ( number of hippos , where the good viewing areas are , etc . ) and then went to the inside hippo enclosure to take pictures of it while I waited . I then got a crepe and read my book until about 4 : 15 . I got up , got my camera together and went over to the hippos . I noticed at this point that there weren 't any people around the hippo enclosure like before so I thought it must have just been a slow time , but then I approached , watched for a bit and realized that the hippos weren 't even in there ! Did they go inside ? How did I miss this ? Sure enough , they did . How I missed this I don 't know - considering I was RIGHT there the entire time . I guess stopping for a crepe was my downfall . Anyways , I took pictures while the hippos munched on their hay and was happy that the elephants were also indoors in the same enclosure . People were more interested in watching the elephants than the hippos which meant that I didn 't have to block too many people 's view . Their indoor enclosure as small , but both had a pool each . They were separated and one hippo had two bit bottom teeth sticking out . I watched them both until the very last second - until the first hippo fell asleep on the ground behind a pole ( not good for me ! ) and the other one casually made it into the water , disappearing from sight . I guess the " hippo feeding time " really was just that they brought them in and fed them hay . It was going on 5 : 30 by this time and the zoo was soon going to close . I walked back out of the zoo and to the front entrance where I inquired about the hippos names . The woman working thought I was totally ridiculous but finally scribbled down some names and thrust my paper back at me . I could make out one name " Nema " but the other … it remains a mystery and even as I tried to clarify with her , I still was confused . I will just have to go back in the next few days and ask someone else to help me . I went back into the train station , got my things ( and had a random man tell me " Thank you come again " in English when I got my things out - very strange ) and got on a train to Stuttgart , where my hotel is . The train is an express service so I read my book without having to transfer trains , sitting next to an older man who literally chugged a small bottle of wine in about two minutes and proceeded to fall asleep . He then woke up and realized I spoke English and when his stop arrived he told me " Thank you and goodnight . " I woke up early and was on a train by 7 : 30am . If it took me all day , I was going to go to the Matterhorn . I was determined . I set off for a two and a half hour train ride to Brig , where I then transferred to an hour long ride from Brig to Zermatt . The first train ride was fine - I was too distracted by things to finish my book and listened to music instead . I seemed to be the only person on the train who wasn 't carrying walking sticks or wearing big boots for hiking . The scenery is absolutely phenomenal . I spent most of the trip just looking out of the window at the gorgeous blue sky , huge mountains and delightful little villages that lay in them . All of my friends know that I am New Zealand obsessed ( I spent several months living and studying there ) and I have to say that Switzerland ranks up there . I transferred trains in Brig - which meant walking the " seven minutes " to the other platform ( which really took only a few ) and hopped on a slower train to Zermatt . The view kept coming but unfortunately my seat on the train wasn 't that great . I had to strain around to see the passing landscapes , but I didn 't really mind . We pulled into Zermatt which turns out to be a much larger town than I thought - but what was I thinking ? Its at the Matterhorn , of course it would be touristy . Trains are banned in Zermatt ( to " preserve the Alpine air " ) and the whole town was just cute . Little electric carts passed off as taxis and there were loads of people there . I walked around for a bit looking at little shops ( albeit tourist shops ) before finding the Gornergrat train , which is a separate smaller train that takes you up the mountains - not up the Matterhorn , but up passed the tree lines to several great hikes and viewing points . The train ascended the mountains and cheesy commentary piped through the loudspeakers but the view was stunning . The day was absolutely gorgeous - and was turning out to get better and better . I got off at the top stop where there is the highest hotel in Europe ( highest in altitude and I am sure high in price ! ) and I stopped to take photos . It was hard to believe that so much snow accumulates here in the winter ( since everywhere around me was dirt ) but then easy when you looked at the year - round snow capped peaks . Five hours after I started off this morning , I was sitting on a rock looking down into the great valley that lead to the Matterhorn . I was happy . After taking photos , buying postcards and getting something to drink , I started walking down the mountain , along with several other people . I didn 't really have any hiking stuff with me but walking down was fine . I passed several people walking up the mountain who looked a little exhausted . I made it down to the sort of mid way point down the mountain before stopping to catch the train the rest of the way down , since time was running tight and I had to get back to Olten as some point that evening ! At the mid - way point there is this small church which is quite remarkable . I boarded the train down and we made it back to the bottom . I walked around a bit more in Zermatt - finding the local cemetery with several extraordinary graves of people from all over the world who have died on the Matterhorn . It was quite something to see . I then got on a train back to Brig and was accosted by the train conductor about my Eurorail pass - he claimed it wasn 't valid despite the fact that I had gotten to the Matterhorn on it . He told me that the Zermatt company was a private company and that I would have to pay . I couldn 't argue with him of course so I got out my wallet , only to find that I had about 20 Swiss francs and 10 Euros . He was demanding 30 francs . So he took my Euros and my Swiss Francs , did some calculations and gave me back 50 cents in change , feeling most please with himself . I just shook my head , got my new ticket and sat back for the rest of the ride out of the valley . In Brig I transferred to the train to Olten and finished my book on the way back - still annoyed with it at the end as I was throughout . I made it back to Olten , walked back to my hotel and called it a night . Well , I thought it would be that easy . I got to Lausanne and discovered that trains connect in Brig , not Lausanne , so I would have to get a train to Brig and then on to Zermatt . On top of this , the train that I needed left like 10 minutes before I showed up . The next one wasn 't for two more hours . My timing has not been good these past few days . So cutting my losses , I decided that I would make it up to Basel where there is a zoo that I am going to . I found a train going to Olten ( where I am staying - about 20 minutes south on the train from Basel ) and headed towards Olten . We arrived about an hour later in some place ( I can 't remember now for the life of me ) where this very smart train that I was on ( one of these trains that talks to you at each stop in several different languages ) told me that in order to connect to Basel , I should get off and get on the adjacent train . This plan worked - I found the luggage storage compartments , watched a man store his luggage and then followed his lead about paying and shutting the door , and was soon off to the zoo . After going outside and trying to make sense of the complex tram system Basel has , I decided to seek help . I went in and found the information desk and tourist office . The woman working there told me that I could find the Basel zoo if I just started walking out to the left for nine minutes . Nine minutes ! Ok ! Thinking this time frame was funny , I set my stop watch and started walking to the left . At one point during these nine minutes the road veered to the left of the left , but I kept going on the main left street instead of veering . I soon saw signs for the zoo , headed down the stairs , passed a power plant , and was at the zoo . I bought my ticket and headed into the zoo , finding the hippos with no problem . There were three of them - again , the goldilocks combination of big , medium and small . The small hippo was lying on the beach area of their enclosure trying to sleep while the other two spent a good deal of time grunting and moving about their enclosure . I took pictures but it was so hard to see them through the tall grasses that hadn 't been cut in a while ( or that were there for effect ) and so there were just a few spots that I could stand in to get a good picture . And with the hippos moving in every direction , I had to keep following them . After a while , I decided to find out their names and wandered into the hippo 's indoor enclosure where not only did I find a keeper who I asked , but found their names posted on the wall , along with the zebra 's names . What luck ! I jotted them down and went out to find Asita ( the baby ) , Helvetia ( the middle one ) and Wilhelm der Grosse ( the big one ) . What a proud name to have ! WILHELM DER GROSSE ! I have no idea what it means ( William something I am sure ) but I thought now THAT is a name for a hippo . I went in search of an ice cream throughout this ( a critical necessity really ) and found the gift shop after I was through taking pictures - and before the zoo closed ! I walked out of the zoo , back up over the pedestrian crossing , past the power plant and back to the train station ( I didn 't time myself this time ) . I then decided that I would see where the central part of Basel was so I bought a ticket for the " Marktplatz " and hopped on a tram . It dropped me off down in the " Marktplatz " and I walked around a bit , then walked up back towards the train station . After I had enough , I got back on a tram back to the train station , collected my things from the locker and got on the next train to Olten . The train conductor came by to check my tickets ( I have a Eurorail pass which has been quite handy since I am on a train everyday and thus don 't have to buy point - to - point tickets ) and he was wondering where I was going . I told him Olten and when we finally approached he came through the car shouting " Next stop , Olten ! " as if I didn 't know . I got the point , and got off . I got a taxi to the hotel - big mistake , my hotel was like just up the road . Ten Euros later - and like 100 feet - I was at the hotel . I checked in , unloaded my bags and went in search of something to eat . I was surprised at the number of food options in Olten - mostly Chinese and Italian where I was walking , but nonetheless there were a few places open . I chose an Italian restaurant and walked in , obviously the only person that wasn 't a regular . I woke up this morning pretty late - catching up on some sleep that I didn 't know I had missed . I went to be at like 9 : 30 or something ( out of lacking other things to do ) and woke up around 8 : 45 since the zoo didn 't ' even open until 10am and I had nothing to do before that . And driving around didn 't really make sense since I was so close to topping my 100 kilometer mark and ever kilometer over adds up in fees . So I got up , put on my same clothes from yesterday ( I obviously hadn 't brought anything with me ) and made myself look as best I could considering . I locked up the room , went downstairs and paid my bill . This time there were several people in the restaurant area of the hotel - all smoking and drinking coffee and looking like they 've done this every day for the past 15 years . I waited and waited and ate my croissants , taking a picture of my small car in the huge parking lot , alone . I watched employees arrive until it was finally time for the zoo to almost open . I pulled my car up to the entrance of the animal reserve area ( where the hippos are ) , waited while the gates were opened , and then waited a bit for the employee to get back to the ticket booth before I pulled up , first in line . I bought my ticket and couldn 't remember if it was the same guy from last night . Deciding that it wasn 't , I thanked him and drove off to the hippos . The hippos are on the sort of end bit of the driving path so I had to cautiously speed past all of the other animals . This takes some skill because you have to look as if you are interested in the other animals and drive fast but not too fast to scare them , or to get booted from the zoo . I had to do this because there was an official zoo car driving in front of me ( going somewhat fast ) and so I eventually overtook this car and drove past trying not to make it look like I was a madwoman . I finally pulled up to them and to my complete and utter joy they were all out of the water , feeding on some hay right near the road . Thank god . I counted five hippos , as I had thought before which meant that I was missing one hippos ' name . I would worry about that later . For the next two or so hours I spent getting pictures of the five hippos , which is difficult when its raining and when they are all chewing at different speeds . This may sound silly , but its actually hard to get a good picture " mid - chew , " especially with five of them . Plus the rain was coming and going and cars kept driving up behind me and inching up closer and closer , I guess testing to see if I was really going to move . When they realized I wasn 't , they would then back up and swerve around me , the parents shooting me dirty looks for taking up the best view and their children in the back looking at me with big eager eyes . Oh the guilt ! I could take it though . I just kept my place and watched as the hippos finished their infinite mound of hay and eventually made their way back into the water . Luckily no keepers came by to make me move ( you 're really not supposed to stop ) but unfortunately no one came by for me to ask about the fifth hippos ' name . I watched until the last moment - until the last hippo gave up eating and waddled into the water . He was obviously the male hippo since he took a great amount of time getting in and then spreading his scent . Satisfied , I rolled up my window , climbed back into the driver 's side and headed to find someone to help me . I pulled back up to the ticket counter and the guy seemed surprised to see me again . I handed over my notebook with the hippos names and tried to explain to him what I wanted . I was certain that the baby hippos ' name was missing from my list - or that the baby didn 't have a name . He thought I was nuts . Absolutely and completely nuts . He said , " what are these ? What do I do with this ? Who is Paulo ? I do not know " and I was tried to explain to him that I had gotten the names from someone else . He just looked at me . Finally I pulled out my translation ( the " I love hippos " schpeel ) and he read it out loud ( almost as if to mock me in a good natured way ) and then got on his walkie talking . He then told me that the baby hippos ' name was Dominique , the father Paulo and the mother Martine . I thanked him , pulled a U - turn again and headed out of the zoo , feeling that embarrassed yet completely satisfied feeling I always get . I drove back to Versailles and pulled up to the car rental agency to bring back my car but hadn 't filled it up with gas since I wanted to show them that I hadn 't used up all of the gas . Based on my mileage and the gas reading , you could easily see that my 100 or so kilometers had not used up over half of the gas tank . It mathematically wasn 't possible . I pulled in and found the agency to be closed from 12 - 2 : 00 for lunch . Who takes a two hour lunch break ? The girl who I rented the car from was inside , she came out and in her very broken English said that I could return the car even though it was past 12 : 00 and so I tried to point out to her the gas thing . So I spent the time walking around finding some lunch and then biting my time sitting down near the Chateau of Versailles , which ended up being a big waste of time . Not the castle , but the sitting . I realized later that I should have visited the gardens of Versailles while I waited , then the rooms later . Let me back up , I had decided that I would visit Versailles while I was , well , in Versailles ( it 's the old royal palace ) because at the rate I was going I might as well get back to Geneva late since everything would be closed by the time I would get there . So I wasted two hours waiting for the rental agency to open when I could have been wandering around the grounds , but I had thought to myself , there is no point starting the tour without having to do all of it . Oh well - these past two days have seemed like a lot of wasted time . At two o ' clock I went back to the rental agency , got the woman who spoke more English , tried to explain my problem , and she just looked at me . So fill it up , she says . But no , I didn 't use this gas . . . I try to explain , even draw pictures and point to the gas . She doesn 't get it . Frustrated , I take the car and find a gas station and fill it up to the top . It only turned out to be like 20 Euros which in hindsight seemed worth it to just pay instead of wait and deal with the Hertz people . But out of principle , I didn 't want to pay it . In the end , I just gave up . I got on , found a seat in the no - smoking area and found just two . I sat down and felt relieved that I had made it on time ( on an earlier train than I had planned ) and a guy came and sort of awkwardly sat down next to me . I then realized crap , I didn 't get a reservation . The reason the train was so full was because all of these people had reservations - I was probably sitting in this guys seat ! That is why he looked at me like I was weird . I then excused myself to get off and literally as I got off the doors closed and it left . I then went and stood in line for a reservation , which took a long time but I eventually got it , all for 3 Euros . I had a brief lapse in line where I thought I saw someone I knew from Macalester ( and literally bolted out of line to chase him down only to find that it wasn 't him but completely taken aback at the similarity ) and then had about an hour and a half to wait for my train . I bought a book at the English bookstore in the train station and bided my time people watching . Finally , finally I was on the train and on my way to Geneva . The train ride back was slow because my new book is much more boring than what I just finished . I was getting impatient with the characters and couldn 't get into it . We made it back to Geneva just before 11 o ' clock at night - I was tired and ready for bed . I got a taxi and after being ridiculously overcharged , I was dropped off at my hotel . I climbed into bed - tired but in the end glad that I had gone back to Thoiry . Rolling over this morning at 5 : 45am to check my watch , I was sure it wasn 't time to get up . And it wasn 't but I had been awakened by furious thundering and flashes of lightning coming from outside . There seemed to be a huge storm going on but my semi - conscious state just checked my watch , noticed the storm , and fell back asleep . Now if you remember , my trip to the Thoiry zoo was unsuccessful . The hippos were a fair distance away and I couldn 't find anyone to help me . I decided that it was critical for me to make the effort to go back to the zoo and I would get the pictures there . Damn it . I couldn 't find one at the taxi stand that I had seen earlier near my hotel so I started to walk in the general direction of the train station , which wasn 't far but a good distance across the lake from my hotel . I kept walking and walking and couldn 't ' find a tax stand anywhere . OF course there would be the odd taxi zooming by me , but they all seemed to be taken or on the other side of the road which was difficult to cross due to fencing and trams and such . So just kept walking and walking and made it to the train station with just barely any time to spare to get the three hour train back to Paris . At this point I started to run and went up the steps and down the passage to the international trains to France . I ran up to the entrance to the platforms and found them closed . Because you have to go through customs to go into France you cannot just simply hop on the train with minutes to spare . I had missed it . And the next train was not until 10am . So , exhausted and overheated , I sat down in a smoky café , got some breakfast and started reading my book to kill two hours . Looking back on this , I guess I really should have scrapped my plans for France and headed to the Matterhorn anyways since I wasn 't ' going to get into Paris until 1 : 30 at this rate , let alone into Versailles where I needed to rent a car , let alone the zoo in Thoiry which is a good drive from Versailles . But I was stubborn and had set my mind to it . So I read my book and when the smoke got too much in the café I wandered and found an internet café in the train station . I had gotten a reservation for this 10 o ' clock train to Paris so I wasn 't worried about missing it . When it was time , I headed to customs , was checked through ( I don 't think they even looked at my passport ) and soon I was sitting on the train heading to Paris . I was absorbed in my book " Fast Food Nation " and sped through a good chunk of it before reaching Paris around 1 : 30 - and any one who has ever read it will know , in three hours I was put off of meat - for good ? Who knows . For now at least . We pulled into the Gare de Lyon train station and I set about finding the subway station and getting the subway to the Invalides station , where I would then get the commuter train to Versailles . I felt like an old pro and walked with confidence to where I needed to go , getting on the subway and train like a real Parisian - reading my book the whole way . Twenty - odd minutes later , I was in Versailles . Phew ! I had made it this far . By this time however , it was going on 3 o ' clock - due to all of the walking , switching trains , commuting on the subway , waiting in line , buying tickets , etc . etc . I just had a few hours before the zoo would even close , so I had to get my car and get on my way . So I walked up to the trusty Avis counter where I had rented the car before but there was a couple ahead of me in line . They seemed to be renting a car ( I know this sounds obvious but they could have been returning it ) but I couldn 't really tell because the office was so small that I had to wait outside of it since the two of them were taking up most of the waiting area . I waited while the couple and the woman behind the desk ( the same one I had before ) laughed and laughed . They seemed to be sharing stories and just yapping away . It didn 't take long for me to get antsy . While they talked on and on about god knows what ( I decided at this point that they weren 't talking about renting cars ) I grew more and more anxious . Time was ticking away and I knew that I needed o get a car quickly . If only I knew French I could speak out to the girl and ask her , but I had to just stand there and wait in line . Gradually I moved closer and closer to them , despite the lack of space , and they eventually realized I was there and said something along the lines of oh , we should go , she 's waiting . Then they started to fill out the frequent user card to get points for their rentals . The man was writing out his phone number ( or address - something with numbers was all I gathered ) and was exclaiming each number enthusiastically - taking precise care with each one as his wife and the Avis woman were laughing . I couldn 't take it . I was just about to leave when finally , finally , finally they were done . They left and I almost collided with them as they went out of the office and I tried my best to dash in . I asked the girl if there were any cars available and she told me no . I looked at my watch - almost 25 minutes had passed - what was I doing ? It was now going on 3 : 25 pm and I needed to get a car and make it to the zoo . I glanced across the road and saw a Hertz rental agency and ran across it . Luckily they did have cars available but it took some time filling out paperwork , getting the car ready , before they handed me the keys . The woman obviously couldn 't tell from the pleading look on my face or the stamping of my foot to realize that I was in a hurry . Oh ! She says , you are from America ! Ohhh … . she talks enthusiastically with her coworker . I didn 't have time for this , I just needed a car . Finally I was handed keys , given the car and was heading out of the parking lot . Only when I got on the main road did I realize that the tank to the car wasn 't full - it was only ¾ full which was annoying . How was I going to explain this to them when I returned the car - I didn 't want to pay for gas I didn 't use . I didn 't have time to go back and sort this out so I kept driving and made it on to the freeway , double backed and was soon heading towards Thoiry . Funny that I actually remembered how to get there and also funny that I didn 't bring with me ( due to forgetfulness ) the maps to the zoo OR the street maps and also funny that the Hertz agency didn 't ' have any of these . I followed the signs again , just when I got to that point of wondering where on earth the zoo was , I saw signs for Thoiry . I turned off of the main road , went through some small villages , and coasted down to the entrance to the zoo . Oh man . The zoo closes at five ? ? Not six ? ? I looked at the times and sure enough , closes at 5pm on week days during September . Great . Just great . I took my card back and heaved a great big sigh but then decided , well , at least I will get their names . So I handed over my prepared and in French statement , " I love hippos - what are their names ? " over to the guy . He took it and thought it was hilarious . There was another guy in the booth with him and they both just shook their heads , but thankfully wrote down some names : Paulo , Paloma , Martine and Junior . I took the pad of paper back and thanked them , clarifying with them the names and the fact that there were just four hippos - which was weird cause I could have sworn that I saw five . Never mind , at least I go their names . So I pulled a U - turn and headed back to - well , where ? What was I going to do ? According to my contact for the car , I was allowed only 100 kilometers to drive ( which is like an hour 's worth of driving which is nothing - but I couldn 't ' refuse it since the rental was so last minute ) and already I have put on something along the lines of 65 kilometers . There was no use me driving all the way back to Versailles to get a hotel - or to call it quits and go back to Geneva . So I drove around more ( adding more kilometers to the car ) and eventually found a sign that read " Hotel , Restaurant . " So I pulled up , went in and completely took the owner by surprise in the fact that they probably hadn 't had anyone in a long time check into the hotel . There was a larger man behind the counter was like , are you sure ? The hotel ? And I was like , umm , yes , please . A younger guy was sitting on a bar stool up at the bar and he just whistled - whatever that meant , I don 't know . I was shown to my room with the big man and his equally big dog who came up to my hips and the room turned out to be quite nice - two small beds , a bathroom and the peachy painted walls that I have been accustomed to in hotel rooms . He asked me if I wanted dinner ( I said no thank you before I even thought which I regretted later ) and he left me . I didn 't know what to do with myself . It was just about 5 : 30 now so not only did I have time to kill but needed to now find some dinner . I finished up my book but only had about a chapter left anyways so this didn 't take long , tried to take a nap and then around 7 o ' clock went in search of food . I drove up to the main village of Thoiry , parked my car and set about finding dinner . There were three or so " restaurants " in the little main area bit - a pizzeria which was closed - another hotel that I must have passed by earlier that I didn 't see who refused to feed me since I wasn 't a hotel guest - and another bar which looked way too local for me to even approach without getting some good stares . I got back in the car and drove around a bit more - eventually finding another small town with its own grocery store where I bought a package of cookies , two sandwiches and pre - made salad . I bought my things , headed to my car ( ignoring the stares and whistles ) and drove back to my hotel where I ate my dinner in bed , fiddled with the TV that didn 't work , and eventually fell asleep . The train ride to Geneva went really quickly - I was absorbed in my book " Fast Food Nation " and sped through a good chunk of it before reaching Geneva around three o ' clock - and any one who has ever read it will know , in two hours I was put off of meat - for good ? Who knows . For now at least . I found a taxi and went to my hotel , checked in and had to change my reservation to get a non - smoking room ( despite protests from the receptionist who claimed that I didn 't request one but then found out that I actually did ) and put my things down . I then headed back out on the town , so to speak . I walked around , map in my bag just in case . I first headed down to Lake Geneva and walked along the water front in the Jardin Anglais and the famous floral clock . I then walked up the hill to the vielle Ville ( the old quarter ) and the beautiful Catedrale de St . Pierre . I climbed up the stairs of the north tower which has a great view over Geneva and the old town . I headed back down , purchased some postcards from the nice guy sitting at the small desk at the bottom of the stairs and avoided listening in on conversations in English . I walked back down the hill and meandered in some shops for a bit before finding dinner at an Italian place which just so happened to be right next to a strip club . I didn 't notice this until I had ordered . In fact , you hardly realized it was there . Perhaps the most ironic thing was that there was a huge children 's carousel just down the street a ways , just feet from the restaurant and the club . No one seemed to really care that a children 's carousel and a strip club were just feet from one another . In America , this would be an outrage - a shocking scandal - a protest . But here in Geneva no one seemed bothered by it . Today I got up with the full intention of returning my rental car and going back up to Paris to get in the zoo at Thoiry for a second time . Unfortunately the rental agreement only allowed me 750 miles for three days and I had already driven that much . So I got up and worked on my photos before heading down to the train station . Two funny things about this hotel : in the lobby , the woman that has been working at the desk always brings her little dog in to work with her . The dog spends most of the day lounging in one area of the lobby to the next , always in a different place when I come down . When I came down this time , the dog was under this small table and the woman was drawing the curtains for the dog , so that the sun didn 't shine directly on it . I came down just as she was doing this ( the dog is so small it looked like she wasn 't really talking to anything if you couldn 't see it ) and she was sort of embarrassed that I caught her talking to her dog . The other funny thing is that the door to the hotel is one of these automatic doors . I didn 't really know that you were supposed to press a button for it to open or close , so I have been walking up to it this whole time trying to get out and sometimes it opened and some times it wouldn 't . Other people would come and go and each time it would just open for them but for me it was like this struggle to stand in the right place ( perhaps the sensor wasn 't working right ) and part luck on my part to get it open . That is until a guy pointed out to me that there was a button to push . Ohhh . I went to return my car ( a day early ) I found the office to be closed on Sunday ! Plus the offices for the rental agencies in Versailles were also closed . So it seemed like I just had to spend the day in Lyon . I ended up getting some lunch , going to the nice museum in town , finishing up my book , walking up to the Basilica and the overlooking view onto Lyon which was quite nice and meeting these two French ladies ( one of whom lives in England near my grandparents ) who were quite funny . They asked me if I had seen the pottery fair going on and I had no idea what they were talking about . Turned out that there were like 150 pottery stalls and a fair going on in the town and I didn 't even know it ! So after the basilica I went down and wandered amongst the fair . I then went and saw a movie and had dinner at a Creperie before going back to the hotel . Joined at the Hippo is an around - the - world travelogue created by Sarah Louise Galbraith , a photographer from Arizona . Sarah traveled on her own to 33 countries across the world from January 2004 - January 2005 photographing as many hippos in zoos as possible . What for ? The photos are being hand - painted onto porcelain dinner service by Royal Copenhagen Porcelain . Juggling a strict itinerary ( every four days was a new city ) , she hassled taxi drivers , struggled with languages ( what 's hippo in Mandarin ? ? ) , quizzed locals and bribed zoo keepers through 101 of the world 's best and worst zoos . Her encounters ranged from frightening ( hippo attacks in Kyoto and muggings in Warsaw ) , to hilarious ( meeting with hippo fanatics at the annual Hippolotofus Convention in Seattle ) . Sarah now works at National Geographic in Washington , D . C . |
This blog is meant to be a psychological experiment which finds its basis in the discovery and controversy of cult or government mind control . Some conspiracy theorists believe a shadowy faction known as the Illuminati utilize inter - generational abuse and cult control as a means to end in their diabolical plot . This blog 's mission is to uncover the details of such plot and hold them up to scientific and psychological review . It has been several weeks since I last posted . In that time , there has been an increase in suspicious activity surrounding my house and family . A part of me wonders if it is merely coincidental . Another part wonders if it is in response to this blog or something else . Since March of this year , the following has occurred : 1 . I have been run off the road and nearly killed twice . Both times by individuals in vehicles who tried very hard to get away . The last one made a shoulder pass through rush hour traffic , nearly causing at least two other vehicles to crash . 2 . Being followed by helicopters ( not military ones ) . Over the past month , I have been followed by a red / black helicopter no less than 6 times . At least once the helicopter flew so low as to nearly land on the roof of my vehicle . 3 . My home has been entered on several occasions . The entries have occurred at night when we were home asleep as well as while we have been gone at work / school . On one night , my little shih tzu went ballistic . Someone had managed to get into my home without tripping the alarm and the dog alerted us . Several weeks later , my dog disappeared . There have also been at least 3 occasions where someone entered while I was gone and DID trigger the alarm . When police arrived , the house was empty but the doors were standing open . No way possible they could have opened on their own or by the wind . 4 . Signals . There appears to be a covert team of at least two people monitoring my very rural and secluded home . If or when I exit my home after dark , there are " signals " that are meant to sound natural but are very clearly out of place and unnatural . On several occasions , my sudden exit combined with these signals has ended with various vehicles following me to my destination . I have attempted to confront these individuals but they will not engage and have so far avoided me . About the time I was 14 years old , my Uncle Barry and cousin , Zeke , moved out of our house and into their own place . My uncle remarried a woman who had 2 daughters , one of whom was a teenager my age . Her name was Caitlyn . I wanted very much to be accepted by Caitlyn and , therefore , spent some time with her , Zeke , and their friends . Just like before , sexual " play " was frequently involved . I remember one day we were at a boy 's house who was friends with my cousin : Justin lived across the street from my uncle . He was my cousin 's age ( thus about 2 years older than me ) . It was me , Caitlyn , Zeke , and Justin . No one else was home . We played video games and just kind of hung out . Zeke and Caitlyn were sitting side - by - side on the couch . I was sitting on the floor . Suddenly , Justin tackles me . At first , I think it 's a game and we wrestle around a bit . Finally , he has me pinned on the floor . I 'm on my back , he is sitting on my stomach , holding my arms above my head . I laugh and say something to the effect of " okay , now let me up … " He doesn 't let me go . Instead , he starts kissing my neck and ears . Immediately , I feel very uncomfortable and go very still . I 'm no longer laughing . I say again " let me up ! " More forcefully this time . Again , Justin ignores me . Now I 'm angry and starting to panic a little . I start to struggle . Struggling seems to turn Justin on and he starts tearing at my shirt , trying to tear it off . I 'm in a full blown panic now and screaming to my cousin to help me . Both Zeke and Caitlyn are just staring at me with stupid smiles on their face . Neither says a word or moves . They just sat and stared with no emotion , almost like they were in a trance or something . As stupid as that sounds … Justin finally tears my shirt completely open as well as my bra . He starts pulling my shorts down . I feel horrified that I 'm about to be raped in front of my cousin and Caitlyn . I feel horribly embarrassed and ashamed . To make things worse , I can feel hot tears starting to fall down my cheeks . I felt as if I was going to throw up . I was blinking my eyes , trying to make the tears stop . Ashamed that I was crying . That 's when I noticed Zeke get up off the couch . He walked over and shoved Justin off of me . In a completely normal voice he says " leave her alone . " Justin looks a little annoyed at first , but then everyone acts as if nothing has happened . I pull my shorts back up and asked Caitlyn for a shirt to wear since mine is torn . Now I am reminded of another time that Zeke stuck up for me . I used to be a cheerleader in high school . It was after the time I could drive because I remember Zeke asking me if I could give him a ride home from a football game ( I had a Camaro ) . When I drove him home , my Uncle invited me inside to meet some friend . I remember him saying that this man , whose name I don 't recall , had just been released from prison . I don 't remember what happened next . My next memory is being in Zeke 's bedroom with this guy and my cousin . We were doing shots of tequila . The next memory is waking up , naked , in Zeke 's bed . It was dark . Zeke was on top of me having sex with me . The guy was in the bed next to us . When Zeke was finished , the guy wanted his turn . He tried to climb on top of me and I started to struggle . I remember Zeke intervening and telling him to leave me alone . I remember the argument between Zeke and the man getting heated , but through the haze of tequila ( and drugs ? I vaguely recall being injected with something or at least feeling a pinch and burn in my arm ) I don 't know what happened . I don 't know who " won . " I know I woke up again around dawn . Everyone was asleep . Zeke and the man were still in bed with me . I quietly crawled away , grabbed my clothes , and left . As I mentioned before , I was doing spectacularly well in school . Because I was so good in math , my classes consisted of astronomy , physics , math , and foreign language ( Spanish ) . I had so far outpaced my peers that teachers weren 't sure what to do with me . In several classes , I was given a desk in the corner of the room along with a textbook and allowed to work at my own pace . In math , I finished two whole textbooks within one semester . I was still somewhat separated from my peers in that people saw me " differently " but from about the time I entered middle school , I started to be accepted into some groups of friends . I would not call them " close friends " really … . I was still cruelly teased on occasion , but I seemed more " involved * side note - I understand NOW the difference between sex , love , and childhood crushes . owever , at the time , sex , love , and " acceptance " were ONE in my mind and completely inseparable . y the time I could drive , my world significantly expanded . y behaviors also began to get very " risky " around this time . started to sneak alcohol and would sometimes come to school drunk . owever , I knew it wouldn 't matter if I got caught because of who I was … seemed to put a lot of " weight " into the fact that the school officials looked at me like I was a superhero ( due to my academics and athletics ) . ometimes I would pick up hitchhikers along the road . don 't ever remember anything bad happening from this risky behavior , but I distinctly remember the " forbidden thrill " and the feeling that I HOPED something bad would happen . can also remember a few incidents of having sex at school . hile I was ignored by my peers , older boys always noticed me . was in classes with upper classmen because of my intelligence . can remember giving hand - jobs or blowjobs to some in the planetarium or locker rooms . can remember going on field trips and sneaking off to do the same . nce , I even gave a blowjob to a boy in full view of all his friends . fterwards , I would feel very ashamed and sick about it . would feel like a cheap whore and was sure everyone else felt the same way . HATED doing it but didn 't know how to say no or not engage . rom the time I turned 16 , I began working at a restaurant with my best friend Polly . owever , I would also occasionally babysit for various people who contacted me . 've never been quite sure how some of these families knew me or received my contact information as they came from upper - middle class or wealthy families and my family was clearly very poor . ot nearly in the same sphere of day - to - day acquaintance ! ne of my sister 's best friends ( Meghan ) had a roommate who was a single mother . he asked me if I could babysit for her overnight on occasion . sually I would staActual Memory - Incident at Mealy Park It was summer time . Jamie was in town and had picked me up . It was dark outside . We drove to a park on the south end of town . At the park , we started having sex . Suddenly , there was a tap on the window . A police officer was shining a light through the window . I tried to grab my clothes as Jamie opened the door . The officer quickly assessed what was happening in the car . He shined the flashlight in my face and asked me if I was there of my own free will . I said yes . I was scared and fumbling with my clothes . He told me to stop and look at him , then asked me how old I was . I told him I was 17 . He kept the flashlight on me the entire time , staring at my nakedness . He started to tell Jamie that what he was doing was illegal because I was underage . My heart was pounding and I distinctly remember feeling sick because I thought I was going to go to jail or that he would call my mother . Then , to my complete surprise , the officer asked me if " I was willing to share ? " I simply looked at him and said " what ? ? " The officer started rubbing the outside of his pants and asked me if I had ever had two men at once . I simply sat there shaking my head , unable to talk but trying to indicate that I didn 't want this . Jamie must have realized that I was scared and not cooperative because he told the officer something to the effect that I was " amazing at sucking dick . " I looked at Jamie but he just shrugged and said " well , if it keeps us out trouble … " So , with Jamie having sex with me from behind , I sucked the officer 's dick . I felt sick and worthless . But I also felt like I had no right to say no or Jamie and I would be in legal trouble . That night , when I got home , I wanted to die . I took a whole bottle of sleeping pills and chased it with whiskey I stole from my stepdad . I thought for sure the " overdose " would end my suffering . I was deeply disappointed when I awoke the next day and nothing had changed . I was still alive . I have no explanation how I did not die that night from the overdose . After that night , One time , I went out on a " blind date " with a girl named Jenny . Jenny was my age and we looked very similar to each other - long blond hair , blue eyes . Broken homes and broken spirits . I don 't recall how or where I met Jenny . Eventually , she came to my school … but I don 't know if she was there before or after this particular incident . I remember that I drove to her house , which was a trailer she shared with her mother in the town next to ours . ( Needless to say , where Jenny lived with her mother would have been outside my school district . ) We got " ready " for the evening and Jenny 's boyfriend , Mark . picked us up . Mark had a friend named Bill who was supposed to be my date for the evening . Bill was a stocky and muscular kind of guy . I think he was an athlete , maybe a football player ? I remember being in Mark 's car and someone broke out some champagne . We drank it while Mark drove us to a house . I don 't know whose house it was or what we did there other than have sex . I can 't even remember WHO I had sex with … . although I think it was Bill . I don 't remember arriving at or leaving the house . At some point , I ended up in a car with Bill . It was Mark 's car , but I don 't know where Mark and Jenny were because we were alone and in the backseat . Bill came onto me and it was clear he wanted sex . For whatever reason , I did not . Bill became rather adamant and forceful that he would not take " no " for an answer . We struggled a little and he pushed me down on the floor between the front and back seats . My arms were pinned underneath me . He grabbed me by my hair and shoved his dick into my mouth . I don 't know WHY I didn 't just bite him . I don 't know , maybe I was scared … . although I don 't recall being specifically afraid . I don 't recall feeling much of anything . I do remember that he started to get really excited and close to climax . The closer he got , the harder he would slam my head onto his dick . I distinctly remember choking on his dick as it went ( what seemed like ) halfway down my thI don 't remember exactly how it happened , but someone gave me a brochure about the SCHOOL in the spring of 1991 . I do remember applying and thinking that it sounded like a wonderful dream . I fantasized about being accepted and escaping my hometown . Needless to say , I remember the day I was tested and interviewed in regards to my SCHOOL application . It was a sunny summer day . My mother and grandmother had driven me down to the [ redacted ] campus for the interviews . I spent probably 3 - 4 hours taking tests . Math tests . English tests . Social tests . Then came the interviews . My interview was with 2 women . I immediately developed a connection with both women . Lacy , an SCHOOL residential counselor , was from the town of [ redacted ] which was very very close to my hometown . Lacy was around my older siblings age and , through talking , we discovered that she had known my older brother and his friends ( who didn 't ? ? ? He was a star athlete and very popular … ) . The 2nd woman , Susan , was a teacher at the SCHOOL who taught Russian . Of course , having friends in the former Soviet Union and knowing a bit of elementary Russian , it was very easy to impress this woman with my knowledge and interest . I should have been no surprise when I was given an acceptance letter a short time later , but I was ecstatic . Classes would start in the fall and I had the summer to prepare ! Incidentally , that summer my mother decided to move from the home I 'd known for so long . I don 't remember or recall the reasons WHY she had to move . It was decided that I would move into my ( newly ) married sister 's house in Columbus , Ohio for the summer until school started at the SCHOOL in the fall . My sister was pregnant with her first child . The summer did not go well with my sister and , for that , I blame myself . My sister insisted on things like a curfew . Being a teenager who was entering a defiant stage , I resisted and " blew off " her rules . After several instances where I refused to come home ( because I was out with boys or with friends ) , my sister stated she was going to send me back to my mother . I freaked out because I did NOT want to go back home . I tried to run away , but was caught and sent back home anyway . By this time , my mother had moved into a one bedroom apartment in a very poor section of [ redacted ] . She and my stepdad ( alcoholic & drug addict ) claimed the bedroom which meant that I had to sleep on the floor in the living room . I hated it there . I hated her and my stepfather and frequently blamed them for my misery . I was defiant and argumentative . I would " hang out " outside because I hated being inside with them . A couple of adult men in the neighborhood occasionally exploited me for sex . I didn 't care … I was just happy for the " positive " attention . I quickly learned I could control men through sex . It gave me a sense of power which I latched onto like a life raft . Soon , the only way I knew to feel in control was to leverage that power . Sex became a powerful weapon . During this summer break , I was also introduced to a group of young delinquents . I was easily enveloped into their world of parties , theft , drugs and alcohol . While I never did any drugs ( that I can remember ) , I almost always drank to excess . As was typical for me in my life , the summer was filled will regular promiscuity and exploitation . Many of my friends in this new " gang " were arrested for various crimeI took a Greyhound bus to see another guy , Chad , who went to school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville . Chad also came from a wealthy family . His parents were going through a divorce and I distinctly remember that he vehemently disliked his father , but took " daddy 's money " to pay his way through school . During the week I spent with Chad , I stayed in his dorm . We frequently had sex in full view of his roommate ( who was also from my state , ironically ) . Chad was a computer science major . He was very smart , handsome , and brilliantly funny . He liked me very much and often spoke about " being together forever . " However , I had no capacity for self - worth , intimacy , or " real love " during this time of my life and I soon ditched Chad too . I refused his calls and emails . In effect , I " disappeared " from his life by erasing all traces of me so he could not find me . Now , because I was a minor , the SCHOOL did have some liability on my welfare . As such , getting in or out of the building was a task . We had strict curfews . The doors had locking mechanisms and alarms . You were locked out if you didn 't make it to your floor before curfew . Once you were locked out , you would have to go to the security guard at the front desk who would call your residential counselor to come get you . Too many demerits for missing curfew and you 'd be kicked out of the SCHOOL . Also , if you were going to go home on the weekends or for holidays , a parent had to come to the dorm and fill out paperwork to " sign you out . " Of course , these supposed " safety measures " were no match for keeping me out of trouble . On numerous occasions , I would walk over to the bowling alley and pay some drunk to say he was my father and sign me out of the SCHOOL . Further , the security desk was usually staffed by soldiers from [ redacted ] AFB . A little bit of flirting and suggestive comments made these men putty in my fingers . On countless occasions , I talked them into " sneaking me up the service elevator " to my floor after missing curfew . So what did I do with my time ? Sometimes I was doing something " legitimate " like working out or practicing stealth skills for my military training . The military was a big deal to me during this time of my life . It actually started before I ever went to the SCHOOL . I used to wake up with vivid dreams of war , the Vietnam war in particular . In an effort to deal with these unexplained visions , I applied for volunteer work at the local VA hospital . Through the hospital , someone connected me with a female nurse who had actually served in Vietnam . I set up a meeting with her to discuss these " visions " I was having . It was during this meeting ( which my mother also attended , an oddity in itself ) that I first learned my biological father had been in Vietnam . While we never discovered the source of my visions and nightmares of war , I became obsessed with Vietnam and the military bActual Memory - Unidentified house party I was out simply wandering the streets alone in the dark in a residential neighborhood , something I had done frequently my whole life . I happened upon a basement party and someone invited me inside . I went in but there were very few people there … . less than 5 maybe ? I remember that the " bartender " gave me a bloody mary . I don 't like bloody marys but I drank it anyway to avoid offending anyone . One guy , early to mid 20 's with reddish hair and brown eyes , was hanging all over me . He encouraged me to dance and kept giving me drink after drink after drink . Before long , I was really drunk . I remember stumbling around and struggling to stand . I distinctly remember the room spinning and faces looking very distorted . I remember saying that " I have to go home … " The red - haired guy told the bartender that he would take me home . My next memory is the two of us walking through a darkened kitchen . The guy grabbed me , shoved me down over the kitchen table , yanked my pants down and started raping me from behind . He was very rough and brutally abusive . I did not make a sound . I did not fight him . I don 't think I COULD have fought him off because of my altered state of mind . My next memory is of being in his car . We had arrived at the area by my dorm . I remember him reaching across me to open the door and shoving me out into the busy street . I ran across 4 lanes of traffic toward my dorm . I remember the blurry headlights of cars slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting me . A young soldier security guard was working that night . I knew him really well . He was a very quiet , humble , sweet boy who I thought was very cute . I quietly asked him to let me up to my room using the service elevator . I think he knew something was wrong but was afraid to ask . Allison and I also developed a " relationship " through IRC with set of 3 college - aged roommates in Italy . The main individual was a man named Gian - Luca . Luca was very good - looking and sophisticated . Actually , I am the one who first met Luca . Because I was learning Italian at the time , I spoke to him first . Later , I introduced him to Allison . We wrote letters back and forth and sent pictures to each other . Luca decided he wanted to come meet us in person . Arrangements were made for him to come to America for a week during Thanksgiving . We were all going to stay at Allison 's home in Tennessee . When Luca came , he was not anything like I thought he would be . He was very infatuated with Allison and I was jealous . Allison was not attracted to Luca and rebuked his advances . Things got very ugly between the three of us and Allison 's mother finally asked Luca to leave . He was very angry about the whole situation and said I was responsible . I remember being very confused and hurt . It also changed the whole dynamic between Allison and me . We stopped hanging out together and things got very tense between us . Allison developed a new group of friends and started using psychedelic drugs ( LSD and mushrooms ) . Soon , she started locking me out of our dorm room . Things escalated until , one day , it broke out in a full - fledged altercation : Allison had locked me out the night before , but did not realize that I had a key . I entered the room early in the morning to get ready for classes . Allison woke up and saw me in the room . She jumped up , slammed the door shut and locked it . Then she turned and got into my face , screaming and yelling obscenities at me . I remained completely calm and tried to rationalize with her . Suddenly , she " snapped " and took a swing at me . I immediately snapped into " killer mode . " I ducked the punch and tackled her . Now , I know I was given some fighting training in ROTC , but the way I responded to Allison 's attack still has me baffled . I pulled moves on her that I still , to this day , don 't know how I knew . Defensive moves meant to take someone down . And take her down , I did . But then I made the mistake of turning to walk out the door ( with the intention of just walking away ) . She hit me from behind with something and I fell to the floor in front of the door . I could hear commotion going on outside and knew that Lacy was trying to get the door open . However , my body was in front of it . Allison had her hands around my neck and was trying to choke me to death . I managed to reach up and grab the area of Allison 's adams apple with my fingers . I squeezed and turned . Allison immediately backed off and I moved so Lacy could get the door open . By this time , Allison was ready to lunge at me again . A friend of hers intervened and had to physically restrain her while I stumbled into the hallway with Lacy . I was livid and really wanted to tear Allison apart . However , I was coherent enough to be aware that if I did something to her , I 'd be kicked out of the SCHOOL . Nothing ever happened to either of us for the altercation . In fact , SCHOOL personnel had no plans to move either of us to new rooms . She had just tried to KILL ME and they acted like they didn 't care ! This was a huge blow to my already damaged self - worth . I slipped into a major depression . After days of tension , I finally stepped up and asked to be placed on another floor of the dormitory - away from Allison . My request was granted , but Allison continued to stalk me . She would frequently " gang up " with her friends and try to intimidate me . On at least 2 occasions , she & her friends ransacked my rooms . Vandalizing everything . I complained but nothing was ever done about it . My grades were already failing . We only went to studies on Monday , Wednesday , and Fridays . Tuesdays & Thursdays were reserved for lab & experiment days . Through the first semester , I think I missed something like 42 days of school ! I started to get physically ill , too . I began getting severe chest pains for which doctors could find no explanation . I also broke out in a bright red blotchy rash across my knees and lower legs . Again , doctors could find no explanation . I stopped eating and sleeping . I was suicidal and spent days locked in my rooms just crying . Eventually , SCHOOL personnel sent me to a psychiatrist . I spent several weeks with the psychiatrist and took a battery of tests . I felt so tired in my soul that I told the psychiatrist many things I would have never otherwise talked about . I told her about instances of child abuse in my life . I told her about the rape on campus . I told her about many things . She seemed to be compassionate about everything , but I think it was all a front . Within a few days , a conference was called with my mother . I was forced to sit in front of a panel of people along with my mother . I don 't know what the psychiatrist told them , but they told my mother that they questioned my mental stability and felt I could no longer stay at the SCHOOL . I was devastated and relieved at the same time . That day , I packed up my things and went back to that crappy little one - bedroom apartment where my mother lived . My mother signed me up for school ( half days ) at a local inner city high school . I was so depressed and cried a lot . I wanted to go back to my old high school , but was told that was impossible because I was now out of district . I hated the new high school . As a " new girl , " I gathered some attention . The popular kids decided that I would make a good addition to their crowd . I was asked out by one of the best looking guys in the school . I agreed but didn 't really " like " the guy . He frequently got on my nerves with his shallowness and falseness . I had sex with him on many occasions , but was by far from faithful to him . I had started back at my old job at a restaurant . I was frequently picking up older men . Some Russian , some doctors , lawyers , etc … Sex was always involved . I felt like a cheap whore . I was so depressed , but had no one to share my feelings with . Showing emotion was not tolerated in my home . I would frequently wait til my parents went to bed , then I 'd fill up a big glass full of straight whiskey and walk out the door . I 'd walk around the city all night long , by myself … . just drinking my sorrows away . I don 't remember ever being touched during these times … . which is probably a bloody miracle . Somewhere around this time , I ran into Mark . He was no longer with Jenny and hadn 't seen her in ages . He invited me out with him and his friend , Joe . We went to Joe 's house and spent the evening drinking whiskey in his bedroom . I ended up drunk and in a threesome with Mark and Joe . After that night , it became a common thing for me to be Joe 's booty - call . He expected me to be at his beck and call . I always complied . Sometime during the summer of 1992 , my mother decided to take me on a trip to California to see my grandfather . It would be the first time I had seen him since 1980 's , during our last visit when he remarried . My grandfather , now retired , owned a kiwi farm in rural northern California . Because it was warm , I was allowed to sleep out in a camper which was parked between the housePosted by Social Relationships I do not want to give the misperception that I did not have ANY friends . I had friends , but often these friendships had so many conflicting emotions tied to them that , at the end of the day , I didn 't know whether these individuals were truly friends or not . The subdivision where I grew up was laid out in a big square . The entrance to the subdivision came to a T where you could turn right or left , but either way eventually brought you around to the other side . Much like the female gender symbol , if viewed aerially , only with a square instead of a circle . If you turned to the right , you approached the townhouse apartments . If you turned to the left , there were normal stick - built houses . I lived in the very last townhouse apartment building . Surrounding our little subdivision were meadows , cornfields , and forests . A big 4 lane highway divided us from the most of the rural little town . There were about a dozen families with kids of various ages living in my neighborhood . I became best friends with a girl who was 2 years older than me named Polly . * * - side note . I do not remember my first meeting with Polly ( or any kids from that neighborhood for that matter ! ) , but she used to frequently talk about HER memory of our first meeting . According to her , I was all alone skating down the sidewalk on pink , plastic roller skates . I would have been around 5 or 6 years old at the time . She claims that everyone knew who I was because of my supposed notoriety from the dog attack incident . She said that she and a group of other kids saw me , recognized me , and all clamored around me while I was skating down the sidewalk because I looked so " fragile " and everyone was afraid I 'd hurt myself . Polly and I were frequently like two peas in a pod . I spent a lot of time at her house . Her mom was a nurse . Her dad worked for the post office but had ( at one time ) been in the military . She had an older brother , Sean , who was 2 years older than her ( 4 years older than me ) . Polly was all about ritual show . I can remember at least 3 occasions where we " traded blood " to become " blood sisters . " It was all done very formally and with a lot of flair and seriousness . Polly was also involved in our experiments ( and torture ) on animals . She loved animals as much as me , specifically her two dogs . I have many memories that surround events involving Polly and her family : I spent the night one time at Polly 's house when her parents had a party . It was mostly attended by her extended family and some adult friends . For the most part , Polly and I stayed in her bedroom . Occasionally , someone would come in the room and talk to us . Once , we snuck out into the hallway to take a look at the party . Polly 's aunt ( Rachel ) was lying unconscious on the floor . She was naked and people were doing sexual things to her . Polly and I quickly went back to the bedroom and pretended to be asleep . Around the time I was 11 or 12 years old , my uncle ( Barry ) moved from California to our town , bringing his young son , Zeke , with him . Zeke was 2 years older than me - about the same age as Polly . He was a very good - looking kid , very popular , and commanded a lot of attention from girls who always seemed to fall at his feet . When I introduced Polly to Zeke , it was love at first sight . Polly absolutely adored Zeke and Zeke absolutely adored Polly . The 3 of us often played together , along with another neighborhood boy named Jack who was my age . Sometimes , both Polly and Jack would spend the night at our house . By this time , Zeke and I shared a room in the basement of our townhouse . * * - side note . The room Zeke & I shared used to belong to my older brother , but he left home a few years earlier to go to college at [ redacted ] University . My brother was like the prodigal son in our family . He was my mother 's first born child and could do no wrong in her eyes . He was a very handsome , popular guy . He was also a star quarterback for the high school football team . I have very few memories of my brother other than he seemed to have it all . A beautiful girlfriend . He hung out with all the rich , popular kids . In regards to me , I remember he used to tease me rather cruelly . He would chase me around the house with pliers , threatening to pinch me with them . But worse than that , he used to chase me down , pin me to the floor , and tickle me until I either felt like I was going to suffocate or threw up . I would cry and scream hysterically , but he would just laugh at my distress . I hated it when he would do these awful things . I can also remember once when he hung me upside down from the upstairs balcony and threatened to drop me to the first floor where I 'd land on my head . Despite his teasing and psychological games , I still adored him just like everyone else did . Anyway , Zeke , Polly , Jack and I all generally had a great time together ; we were all very bonded , but there was also a lot of pressure and instances of " making out . " Sexual acts were always present . No one ever checked on us or seemed to feel that 2 pre - teen boys and 2 pre - teen girls sleeping together was inappropriate . Eventually , Polly and her family moved to a bigger ( and more rural & isolated ) home that was about 5 miles from my house . I was devastated that she was no longer so close , but I would still ride my bike to her house frequently or vice versa . Polly was at my house the night my family was changed forever . My brother had just turned 21 years old and was going out to party with his friends . Polly was spending the night at my house that night . We were doing some private ritual with candles . I can 't remember what … The phone rang . I got up and answered it . My older sister had also answered it on another phone . I listened as a man on other line asked for my mother . I heard my sister call out to my mother . I hung up the phone and went back to playing with Polly . Soon , my mother and sister came to tell Polly and me that they were leaving . I asked what was going on . My mother said " your brother has been in an accident . " My brother had MANY accidents in his young life and always seemed to escape unscathed . I shrugged it off and thought nothing of it . My mother and sister left , leaving Polly and I home alone . I don 't remember what happened next or when we fell asleep . I only know that when I awoke in the morning , the house was full of people . Polly 's dad was there to get her . Despite all the people being in the house , nothing seemed to register to me that something was off . With complete unconcern , I casually asked my mom how my brother was doing . At that point , she said " He 's dead . " She yanked me to her , squeezing me painfully hard , and broke down sobbing . I stood there in complete shock , not saying a word , and showing no emotion . Polly 's dad broke the silence by saying he was sorry and walking out the door . That would be the last time Polly was ever in my home . I think my brother 's death was a pivotal point of change in my friendship with Polly . Although we both tried hard to recapture our innocence or pretend nothing had changed , something was invariably , imperceptibly different . I was at her house the night she learned her mother had left her father for another man . We were playing hide and seek . Polly went to hide in her mother 's closet only to find it empty . I found her sitting on the floor staring into the empty closet . After that , her father became very verbally and physically abusive . He always seemed angry . I can remember him busting down the bedroom door and screaming at us . We were both scared of him . It was also around that time that Polly and I began a bizarre burning ritual . We would go into her bathroom and fill up the bathtub with scalding hot water . When the tub was full , we would both get into the water completely naked . No one was allowed to flinch or show any emotion or reaction to the scalding hot water . When the water cooled , we would drain the tub and re - fill it will more scalding hot water , repeating the ritual over and over . The ritual became a test to teach ourselves " discipline " and to " not react " to physical ( or emotional ? ) pain on our bodies . Things also changed for me at school around this time . Prior to my brother 's death , I had been a smart , but mediocre student . I think the reason I didn 't do well was because I didn 't like school . School equaled pain , humiliation , and loneliness in my mind . I felt ostracized from my peers and was frequently the object of teasing and bullying . I had few friends at school . All the kids from my neighborhood were either older or younger than me so I didn 't see them much at school . But something changed when my brother died . My mother , stricken with grief over my brother 's death , felt she could not cope with her children . For a still unknown reason , she sent my sister away to my aunt in California . My sister was 19 yrs old at the time . I was kept at home , but I may as well have been invisible for all I existed in her world . I was desperately hurting and confused . Something changed , unconsciously , in my mind and I decided I WANTED my mother to see me . I wanted to replace my brother as IMPORTANT in her eyes . I tried to be just like him . He was a star athlete . At the time , I played sports but was an average player . After he died , I started really applying myself to be the best of the best . I would frequently wake up around dawn and go run or work out . Soon , I had succeeded . I was an all - star softball player and captain of the cheerleading squad . But it wasn 't enough . My brother had been smart too . Before I had avoided school , now I was driven to succeed at it . Without even seeming to really try , I started to pull in straight A 's . My teachers and school administrators literally gushed over my accomplishments . My mother hardly ever seemed to take notice . When she did say something , it was usually a half - hearted " nice job … " and then I was forgotten about again . Each time , I would resolve to try harder . I pushed myself harder and harder to do better and be more impressive . After Polly 's mother left , things were truly never the same . Polly became very withdrawn , distant , and emotionally hurtful toward me . Sometimes she would band together with " other friends " and gang up on me to bully me around . I was subjected to some very hurtful and ugly teasing and bullying . I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her actions , but always found myself trying to justify her behavior . My soul felt torn apart but I convinced myself that it didn 't really matter because I couldn 't bear to lose Polly . Also during this time , Zeke changed too . He started picking on me mercilessly which would , frequently , turn into a physical altercation . Sometimes during the altercations , he was grab my genitals or stick his face between my legs while holding me down . At first , I was enraged and would fight back . Once , I bit him very hard on his back . He punched me so hard in the face that I saw stars . I went crying to my mom . She saw the bite mark on his back and I was punished for biting him . It became apparent that she didn 't want to be bothered with my problems and was no source of help for me . Bothering her meant nothing more than having verbal abuse and contempt heaped on my head . If I cried , she would tell me to " quit being a baby ! " or " Stop being so weak ! " Eventually , Zeke became more aggressive in his sexual abuse . The more aggressive and bold he became , the less I tried to fight it off . By the time I was able to drive , I simply submitted to his demands for sex and let him do whatever he wanted . After the disaster of what happened when I told about the sexual abuse with my Uncle Sam , I was hesitant to tell ANYONE about the things that were happening with Zeke . However , I felt that if anyone would understand , it would be Polly . After all , she had been my best friend since I was 5 years old . . . I approached her at school one day and pulled her aside in the bathroom . I told her what Zeke was doing to me . To my utter surprise and bewilderment , she got angry at ME . She said some very ugly and hateful tSex and sexual acts were frequently an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood and a " normal " part of my life . Most of it revolved around my next door neighbor . Her name was Wendy . She was about 5 or 6 years older than me . Wendy ruled the neighborhood like a queen over her kingdom . Everyone bowed down to and feared her . We also feared her father - an abusive , mean man . I can remember one incident where he beat her older brother with a thick , link chain . Wendy would select kids to meet at her home . If you were chosen , you did NOT disobey . Disobedience meant being ostracized in the neighborhood , an unthinkable punishment . She routinely chose the same boys and I frequently had the misfortune of being the only girl . At times , I think she would choose me as a punishment or with purposeful intent to cause me hurt and pain . We would show up at her house as scheduled . Sometimes her older brother and his friends would be there ( he was my older sister 's age and my sister LOVED him ) . Wendy would play demeaning sexual games . I was often embarrassed and humiliated . Sometimes things were a mass orgy . Other times , we were " paired off " and sent to particular rooms to engage in various sex acts . Summers were especially bad because this happened almost every day for hours . I know on at least 2 occasions , older grown men were brought into the house and serviced by Wendy or me . Sometimes drugs and alcohol were involved . While I can 't recall any specific proof of fact , I have strong beliefs that we were photographed and videotaped during these " sessions . " I feel like proof of this is tugging at my memory just beyond its reach . Sometimes I feel like I can " grasp " it and remember flashes of images of this occurring in Wendy 's parents bedroom ( decked out in a king size waterbed and very fancy ) , but then the image slips away again like a ghost . Next door to Polly 's old home lived a family of 5 boys . The boys were delinquents and frequently into drugs and trouble . These boys were almost ALWAYS at Wendy 's " parties . " The two oldest boys were closer to my older sister 's age . They were rarely around , but you could always count on one or more of the younger 3 to be there . The youngest one was at least 3 or 4 years older than me . At one time or another , I was forced into sex acts with all 3 of them . If I were alone , I would try to avoid them in the neighborhood if at all possible . If they managed to corner me alone , I could always count on being coerced into some sex act or another . I didn 't fight , with one exception : I was out playing in the meadows which surrounded the neighborhood . I was all alone . It was a beautiful , sunny day outside . I don 't remember how it happened , but I remember that the youngest boy , Luke , caught me unaware in the field . He grabbed me and dragged me to a place in the meadow where there was a stone slab . It was secluded and no one was around that I recall . The stone slab had pictures on it . The only picture I remember was a knife . On the blade of the knife were the words " RAPE " . I remember Luke pointing out that picture to me and asking me if I knew what it meant . I said no . Luke then pushed me down on the stone slab and pulled my clothes off . I didn 't fight him . He climbed on top of me while I just laid there . He whispered in my ear for me to fight him . Again , I just laid there . I must have made him angry because he began to choke me . At that point , I struggled and started to fight . He continued to choke me , also covering my mouth and nose , as he had sex with me . I remember him saying " yeah , baby … scream . Keep screaming . No one can hear you … " I was crying and truly thought I was going to die . I don 't remember how it ended . I don 't remember getting up . I don 't remember getting dressed or even how I got home . Years later , I had another incident with Luke . There was an old , decrepit barn where many of the neighborhood kids would congregate when we " snuck out " at night . Once when I was around 18 years old , I went to that barn in the middle of the night . I have no earthly idea why I went there by myself , especially as I hadn 't even lived in that neighborhood for several years ( we moved out when I was 16 , but I 'll get to that later ) . Luke was there . It was all very bizarre because I had not seen Luke for a long time . He pushed me up against the wall and had sex with me again . Before he did , I distinctly remember him telling me how much he had always liked me , loved me even . How he couldn 't seem to get enough and thought about me all the time . I remember wishing I could just gI can 't exactly pinpoint the timeframe when my " world " turned international , but at some point after my brother died I found an intense interest in other cultures , especially the Middle East , Europe , Australia , and Russia . I started checking out books from the library on other countries and even listened to Middle Eastern music . I was especially fond of the Oud and would become mesmerized by listening to it . Around the time I turned 13 or so , I became a part of the " International " club . I do not recall how I came to learn about this club or by whom . I simply remember filling out the application and choosing the countries with which I wanted to share my name and information . I went sent a list of 20 or so names back with individuals who I had been " paired " with from other countries . Some of those I remember - Stephan from ItalyKerry from IrelandCharles from EnglandMaria from Nigeria And others … . there was a girl from Spain , one from Lithuania , and one from Guyana . I wrote to all of them and established many friendships . I would send numerous letters and boxes overseas , sharing the intimacies of my life , culture and country , with those friends I had abroad . But the one I was , by far , the closest to was Kylie from Australia . Kylie and I became very close friends . We wrote to each other obsessively and even talked on the telephone whenever we could manage to do so . Kylie 's parents were divorced and she lived on a family - owned farm with her mother and younger brother . Kylie had two older siblings ( an older brother and sister ) who lived away from home . We promised to come visit each other someday . That " someday " came when I was about 16 years old . Kylie was going to be in the foreign exchange . I 'm not quite sure how it was managed , but somehow , my mother was able to request to be Kylie 's host family in the exchange . Kylie came to America one wintery snowy night . We were so happy to see each other that we cried , hugging each other for hours . Kylie had never seen snow so we ran outside in the midnight wonderland nearly the whole night . Kylie did attend my school , although only for a day . Strangely , the foreign exchange program was only for a period of about 6 weeks . The exchange officials allowed Kylie to stay with my family for 3 weeks and then insisted that she move to the state of Indiana to another host family for the last 3 weeks of her stay . I was very jealous because the other " host family " was very wealthy . They had a young daughter my & Kylie 's age who was fabulously beautiful and popular . The other family took Kylie on trips and to do things that my poor family could not do . I felt very scared and insecure that I would lose Kylie as my dear friend because I could not " compare " with the wealthy host family . A few months after Kylie , we received another foreign exchange " student . " Her name was Celia and she was from the Philippines . Celia had come to America with her sister , both as part of the foreign exchange , although her sister had been sent off to another family . Celia was very small and seemed very scared and fragile . I remember coming home from school the first day she arrived . She was sleeping on a bed on the floor of my room . She was so tiny that had I not seen her feet sticking out of the blankets , I 'd not have thought anyone was there ! Her frame was nearly indiscernible in the bed . Celia was much different than Kylie . Celia always seemed to avoid me , although she was not impolite . She did not want to talk to me and , seemingly , was not interested in being my friend . If I entered a room , she would immediately leave it . Celia frequently made phone calls from our house . I never knew who she called as she always spoke in Filipino but guessed it was her sister or family . Then one day , Celia disappeared from our house . I remember my mother telling me that Celia had gone to see her sister and her sister 's host family . I remember feeling disappointed that she continued to rebuke my overtures of friendship . After several days , Celia still did not come back . I remember my mother being very angry because she did not know where Celia was or whom she was with . I remember the day my mother notified the Exchange officials that Celia had " run away . " She seemed to be on the phone for hours , with whom , I don 't know . But later that evening , my mother told me that Celia and her sister were in a lot of trouble . She indicated that the rules of the exchange program were very strict and that Celia was not allowed to leave our home , speak in her native language , or EVER see her sister while she was here . My mother stated that Celia and her sister were to be deported back to the Philippines . After that incident , my mother refused to be part of the Exchange Program again . Exchange officials had been interested in sendinPosted by |
This blog is meant to be a psychological experiment which finds its basis in the discovery and controversy of cult or government mind control . Some conspiracy theorists believe a shadowy faction known as the Illuminati utilize inter - generational abuse and cult control as a means to end in their diabolical plot . This blog 's mission is to uncover the details of such plot and hold them up to scientific and psychological review . It has been several weeks since I last posted . In that time , there has been an increase in suspicious activity surrounding my house and family . A part of me wonders if it is merely coincidental . Another part wonders if it is in response to this blog or something else . Since March of this year , the following has occurred : 1 . I have been run off the road and nearly killed twice . Both times by individuals in vehicles who tried very hard to get away . The last one made a shoulder pass through rush hour traffic , nearly causing at least two other vehicles to crash . 2 . Being followed by helicopters ( not military ones ) . Over the past month , I have been followed by a red / black helicopter no less than 6 times . At least once the helicopter flew so low as to nearly land on the roof of my vehicle . 3 . My home has been entered on several occasions . The entries have occurred at night when we were home asleep as well as while we have been gone at work / school . On one night , my little shih tzu went ballistic . Someone had managed to get into my home without tripping the alarm and the dog alerted us . Several weeks later , my dog disappeared . There have also been at least 3 occasions where someone entered while I was gone and DID trigger the alarm . When police arrived , the house was empty but the doors were standing open . No way possible they could have opened on their own or by the wind . 4 . Signals . There appears to be a covert team of at least two people monitoring my very rural and secluded home . If or when I exit my home after dark , there are " signals " that are meant to sound natural but are very clearly out of place and unnatural . On several occasions , my sudden exit combined with these signals has ended with various vehicles following me to my destination . I have attempted to confront these individuals but they will not engage and have so far avoided me . About the time I was 14 years old , my Uncle Barry and cousin , Zeke , moved out of our house and into their own place . My uncle remarried a woman who had 2 daughters , one of whom was a teenager my age . Her name was Caitlyn . I wanted very much to be accepted by Caitlyn and , therefore , spent some time with her , Zeke , and their friends . Just like before , sexual " play " was frequently involved . I remember one day we were at a boy 's house who was friends with my cousin : Justin lived across the street from my uncle . He was my cousin 's age ( thus about 2 years older than me ) . It was me , Caitlyn , Zeke , and Justin . No one else was home . We played video games and just kind of hung out . Zeke and Caitlyn were sitting side - by - side on the couch . I was sitting on the floor . Suddenly , Justin tackles me . At first , I think it 's a game and we wrestle around a bit . Finally , he has me pinned on the floor . I 'm on my back , he is sitting on my stomach , holding my arms above my head . I laugh and say something to the effect of " okay , now let me up … " He doesn 't let me go . Instead , he starts kissing my neck and ears . Immediately , I feel very uncomfortable and go very still . I 'm no longer laughing . I say again " let me up ! " More forcefully this time . Again , Justin ignores me . Now I 'm angry and starting to panic a little . I start to struggle . Struggling seems to turn Justin on and he starts tearing at my shirt , trying to tear it off . I 'm in a full blown panic now and screaming to my cousin to help me . Both Zeke and Caitlyn are just staring at me with stupid smiles on their face . Neither says a word or moves . They just sat and stared with no emotion , almost like they were in a trance or something . As stupid as that sounds … Justin finally tears my shirt completely open as well as my bra . He starts pulling my shorts down . I feel horrified that I 'm about to be raped in front of my cousin and Caitlyn . I feel horribly embarrassed and ashamed . To make things worse , I can feel hot tears starting to fall down my cheeks . I felt as if I was going to throw up . I was blinking my eyes , trying to make the tears stop . Ashamed that I was crying . That 's when I noticed Zeke get up off the couch . He walked over and shoved Justin off of me . In a completely normal voice he says " leave her alone . " Justin looks a little annoyed at first , but then everyone acts as if nothing has happened . I pull my shorts back up and asked Caitlyn for a shirt to wear since mine is torn . Now I am reminded of another time that Zeke stuck up for me . I used to be a cheerleader in high school . It was after the time I could drive because I remember Zeke asking me if I could give him a ride home from a football game ( I had a Camaro ) . When I drove him home , my Uncle invited me inside to meet some friend . I remember him saying that this man , whose name I don 't recall , had just been released from prison . I don 't remember what happened next . My next memory is being in Zeke 's bedroom with this guy and my cousin . We were doing shots of tequila . The next memory is waking up , naked , in Zeke 's bed . It was dark . Zeke was on top of me having sex with me . The guy was in the bed next to us . When Zeke was finished , the guy wanted his turn . He tried to climb on top of me and I started to struggle . I remember Zeke intervening and telling him to leave me alone . I remember the argument between Zeke and the man getting heated , but through the haze of tequila ( and drugs ? I vaguely recall being injected with something or at least feeling a pinch and burn in my arm ) I don 't know what happened . I don 't know who " won . " I know I woke up again around dawn . Everyone was asleep . Zeke and the man were still in bed with me . I quietly crawled away , grabbed my clothes , and left . As I mentioned before , I was doing spectacularly well in school . Because I was so good in math , my classes consisted of astronomy , physics , math , and foreign language ( Spanish ) . I had so far outpaced my peers that teachers weren 't sure what to do with me . In several classes , I was given a desk in the corner of the room along with a textbook and allowed to work at my own pace . In math , I finished two whole textbooks within one semester . I was still somewhat separated from my peers in that people saw me " differently " but from about the time I entered middle school , I started to be accepted into some groups of friends . I would not call them " close friends " really … . I was still cruelly teased on occasion , but I seemed more " involved * side note - I understand NOW the difference between sex , love , and childhood crushes . owever , at the time , sex , love , and " acceptance " were ONE in my mind and completely inseparable . y the time I could drive , my world significantly expanded . y behaviors also began to get very " risky " around this time . started to sneak alcohol and would sometimes come to school drunk . owever , I knew it wouldn 't matter if I got caught because of who I was … seemed to put a lot of " weight " into the fact that the school officials looked at me like I was a superhero ( due to my academics and athletics ) . ometimes I would pick up hitchhikers along the road . don 't ever remember anything bad happening from this risky behavior , but I distinctly remember the " forbidden thrill " and the feeling that I HOPED something bad would happen . can also remember a few incidents of having sex at school . hile I was ignored by my peers , older boys always noticed me . was in classes with upper classmen because of my intelligence . can remember giving hand - jobs or blowjobs to some in the planetarium or locker rooms . can remember going on field trips and sneaking off to do the same . nce , I even gave a blowjob to a boy in full view of all his friends . fterwards , I would feel very ashamed and sick about it . would feel like a cheap whore and was sure everyone else felt the same way . HATED doing it but didn 't know how to say no or not engage . rom the time I turned 16 , I began working at a restaurant with my best friend Polly . owever , I would also occasionally babysit for various people who contacted me . 've never been quite sure how some of these families knew me or received my contact information as they came from upper - middle class or wealthy families and my family was clearly very poor . ot nearly in the same sphere of day - to - day acquaintance ! ne of my sister 's best friends ( Meghan ) had a roommate who was a single mother . he asked me if I could babysit for her overnight on occasion . sually I would staActual Memory - Incident at Mealy Park It was summer time . Jamie was in town and had picked me up . It was dark outside . We drove to a park on the south end of town . At the park , we started having sex . Suddenly , there was a tap on the window . A police officer was shining a light through the window . I tried to grab my clothes as Jamie opened the door . The officer quickly assessed what was happening in the car . He shined the flashlight in my face and asked me if I was there of my own free will . I said yes . I was scared and fumbling with my clothes . He told me to stop and look at him , then asked me how old I was . I told him I was 17 . He kept the flashlight on me the entire time , staring at my nakedness . He started to tell Jamie that what he was doing was illegal because I was underage . My heart was pounding and I distinctly remember feeling sick because I thought I was going to go to jail or that he would call my mother . Then , to my complete surprise , the officer asked me if " I was willing to share ? " I simply looked at him and said " what ? ? " The officer started rubbing the outside of his pants and asked me if I had ever had two men at once . I simply sat there shaking my head , unable to talk but trying to indicate that I didn 't want this . Jamie must have realized that I was scared and not cooperative because he told the officer something to the effect that I was " amazing at sucking dick . " I looked at Jamie but he just shrugged and said " well , if it keeps us out trouble … " So , with Jamie having sex with me from behind , I sucked the officer 's dick . I felt sick and worthless . But I also felt like I had no right to say no or Jamie and I would be in legal trouble . That night , when I got home , I wanted to die . I took a whole bottle of sleeping pills and chased it with whiskey I stole from my stepdad . I thought for sure the " overdose " would end my suffering . I was deeply disappointed when I awoke the next day and nothing had changed . I was still alive . I have no explanation how I did not die that night from the overdose . After that night , One time , I went out on a " blind date " with a girl named Jenny . Jenny was my age and we looked very similar to each other - long blond hair , blue eyes . Broken homes and broken spirits . I don 't recall how or where I met Jenny . Eventually , she came to my school … but I don 't know if she was there before or after this particular incident . I remember that I drove to her house , which was a trailer she shared with her mother in the town next to ours . ( Needless to say , where Jenny lived with her mother would have been outside my school district . ) We got " ready " for the evening and Jenny 's boyfriend , Mark . picked us up . Mark had a friend named Bill who was supposed to be my date for the evening . Bill was a stocky and muscular kind of guy . I think he was an athlete , maybe a football player ? I remember being in Mark 's car and someone broke out some champagne . We drank it while Mark drove us to a house . I don 't know whose house it was or what we did there other than have sex . I can 't even remember WHO I had sex with … . although I think it was Bill . I don 't remember arriving at or leaving the house . At some point , I ended up in a car with Bill . It was Mark 's car , but I don 't know where Mark and Jenny were because we were alone and in the backseat . Bill came onto me and it was clear he wanted sex . For whatever reason , I did not . Bill became rather adamant and forceful that he would not take " no " for an answer . We struggled a little and he pushed me down on the floor between the front and back seats . My arms were pinned underneath me . He grabbed me by my hair and shoved his dick into my mouth . I don 't know WHY I didn 't just bite him . I don 't know , maybe I was scared … . although I don 't recall being specifically afraid . I don 't recall feeling much of anything . I do remember that he started to get really excited and close to climax . The closer he got , the harder he would slam my head onto his dick . I distinctly remember choking on his dick as it went ( what seemed like ) halfway down my thI don 't remember exactly how it happened , but someone gave me a brochure about the SCHOOL in the spring of 1991 . I do remember applying and thinking that it sounded like a wonderful dream . I fantasized about being accepted and escaping my hometown . Needless to say , I remember the day I was tested and interviewed in regards to my SCHOOL application . It was a sunny summer day . My mother and grandmother had driven me down to the [ redacted ] campus for the interviews . I spent probably 3 - 4 hours taking tests . Math tests . English tests . Social tests . Then came the interviews . My interview was with 2 women . I immediately developed a connection with both women . Lacy , an SCHOOL residential counselor , was from the town of [ redacted ] which was very very close to my hometown . Lacy was around my older siblings age and , through talking , we discovered that she had known my older brother and his friends ( who didn 't ? ? ? He was a star athlete and very popular … ) . The 2nd woman , Susan , was a teacher at the SCHOOL who taught Russian . Of course , having friends in the former Soviet Union and knowing a bit of elementary Russian , it was very easy to impress this woman with my knowledge and interest . I should have been no surprise when I was given an acceptance letter a short time later , but I was ecstatic . Classes would start in the fall and I had the summer to prepare ! Incidentally , that summer my mother decided to move from the home I 'd known for so long . I don 't remember or recall the reasons WHY she had to move . It was decided that I would move into my ( newly ) married sister 's house in Columbus , Ohio for the summer until school started at the SCHOOL in the fall . My sister was pregnant with her first child . The summer did not go well with my sister and , for that , I blame myself . My sister insisted on things like a curfew . Being a teenager who was entering a defiant stage , I resisted and " blew off " her rules . After several instances where I refused to come home ( because I was out with boys or with friends ) , my sister stated she was going to send me back to my mother . I freaked out because I did NOT want to go back home . I tried to run away , but was caught and sent back home anyway . By this time , my mother had moved into a one bedroom apartment in a very poor section of [ redacted ] . She and my stepdad ( alcoholic & drug addict ) claimed the bedroom which meant that I had to sleep on the floor in the living room . I hated it there . I hated her and my stepfather and frequently blamed them for my misery . I was defiant and argumentative . I would " hang out " outside because I hated being inside with them . A couple of adult men in the neighborhood occasionally exploited me for sex . I didn 't care … I was just happy for the " positive " attention . I quickly learned I could control men through sex . It gave me a sense of power which I latched onto like a life raft . Soon , the only way I knew to feel in control was to leverage that power . Sex became a powerful weapon . During this summer break , I was also introduced to a group of young delinquents . I was easily enveloped into their world of parties , theft , drugs and alcohol . While I never did any drugs ( that I can remember ) , I almost always drank to excess . As was typical for me in my life , the summer was filled will regular promiscuity and exploitation . Many of my friends in this new " gang " were arrested for various crimeI took a Greyhound bus to see another guy , Chad , who went to school at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville . Chad also came from a wealthy family . His parents were going through a divorce and I distinctly remember that he vehemently disliked his father , but took " daddy 's money " to pay his way through school . During the week I spent with Chad , I stayed in his dorm . We frequently had sex in full view of his roommate ( who was also from my state , ironically ) . Chad was a computer science major . He was very smart , handsome , and brilliantly funny . He liked me very much and often spoke about " being together forever . " However , I had no capacity for self - worth , intimacy , or " real love " during this time of my life and I soon ditched Chad too . I refused his calls and emails . In effect , I " disappeared " from his life by erasing all traces of me so he could not find me . Now , because I was a minor , the SCHOOL did have some liability on my welfare . As such , getting in or out of the building was a task . We had strict curfews . The doors had locking mechanisms and alarms . You were locked out if you didn 't make it to your floor before curfew . Once you were locked out , you would have to go to the security guard at the front desk who would call your residential counselor to come get you . Too many demerits for missing curfew and you 'd be kicked out of the SCHOOL . Also , if you were going to go home on the weekends or for holidays , a parent had to come to the dorm and fill out paperwork to " sign you out . " Of course , these supposed " safety measures " were no match for keeping me out of trouble . On numerous occasions , I would walk over to the bowling alley and pay some drunk to say he was my father and sign me out of the SCHOOL . Further , the security desk was usually staffed by soldiers from [ redacted ] AFB . A little bit of flirting and suggestive comments made these men putty in my fingers . On countless occasions , I talked them into " sneaking me up the service elevator " to my floor after missing curfew . So what did I do with my time ? Sometimes I was doing something " legitimate " like working out or practicing stealth skills for my military training . The military was a big deal to me during this time of my life . It actually started before I ever went to the SCHOOL . I used to wake up with vivid dreams of war , the Vietnam war in particular . In an effort to deal with these unexplained visions , I applied for volunteer work at the local VA hospital . Through the hospital , someone connected me with a female nurse who had actually served in Vietnam . I set up a meeting with her to discuss these " visions " I was having . It was during this meeting ( which my mother also attended , an oddity in itself ) that I first learned my biological father had been in Vietnam . While we never discovered the source of my visions and nightmares of war , I became obsessed with Vietnam and the military bActual Memory - Unidentified house party I was out simply wandering the streets alone in the dark in a residential neighborhood , something I had done frequently my whole life . I happened upon a basement party and someone invited me inside . I went in but there were very few people there … . less than 5 maybe ? I remember that the " bartender " gave me a bloody mary . I don 't like bloody marys but I drank it anyway to avoid offending anyone . One guy , early to mid 20 's with reddish hair and brown eyes , was hanging all over me . He encouraged me to dance and kept giving me drink after drink after drink . Before long , I was really drunk . I remember stumbling around and struggling to stand . I distinctly remember the room spinning and faces looking very distorted . I remember saying that " I have to go home … " The red - haired guy told the bartender that he would take me home . My next memory is the two of us walking through a darkened kitchen . The guy grabbed me , shoved me down over the kitchen table , yanked my pants down and started raping me from behind . He was very rough and brutally abusive . I did not make a sound . I did not fight him . I don 't think I COULD have fought him off because of my altered state of mind . My next memory is of being in his car . We had arrived at the area by my dorm . I remember him reaching across me to open the door and shoving me out into the busy street . I ran across 4 lanes of traffic toward my dorm . I remember the blurry headlights of cars slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting me . A young soldier security guard was working that night . I knew him really well . He was a very quiet , humble , sweet boy who I thought was very cute . I quietly asked him to let me up to my room using the service elevator . I think he knew something was wrong but was afraid to ask . Allison and I also developed a " relationship " through IRC with set of 3 college - aged roommates in Italy . The main individual was a man named Gian - Luca . Luca was very good - looking and sophisticated . Actually , I am the one who first met Luca . Because I was learning Italian at the time , I spoke to him first . Later , I introduced him to Allison . We wrote letters back and forth and sent pictures to each other . Luca decided he wanted to come meet us in person . Arrangements were made for him to come to America for a week during Thanksgiving . We were all going to stay at Allison 's home in Tennessee . When Luca came , he was not anything like I thought he would be . He was very infatuated with Allison and I was jealous . Allison was not attracted to Luca and rebuked his advances . Things got very ugly between the three of us and Allison 's mother finally asked Luca to leave . He was very angry about the whole situation and said I was responsible . I remember being very confused and hurt . It also changed the whole dynamic between Allison and me . We stopped hanging out together and things got very tense between us . Allison developed a new group of friends and started using psychedelic drugs ( LSD and mushrooms ) . Soon , she started locking me out of our dorm room . Things escalated until , one day , it broke out in a full - fledged altercation : Allison had locked me out the night before , but did not realize that I had a key . I entered the room early in the morning to get ready for classes . Allison woke up and saw me in the room . She jumped up , slammed the door shut and locked it . Then she turned and got into my face , screaming and yelling obscenities at me . I remained completely calm and tried to rationalize with her . Suddenly , she " snapped " and took a swing at me . I immediately snapped into " killer mode . " I ducked the punch and tackled her . Now , I know I was given some fighting training in ROTC , but the way I responded to Allison 's attack still has me baffled . I pulled moves on her that I still , to this day , don 't know how I knew . Defensive moves meant to take someone down . And take her down , I did . But then I made the mistake of turning to walk out the door ( with the intention of just walking away ) . She hit me from behind with something and I fell to the floor in front of the door . I could hear commotion going on outside and knew that Lacy was trying to get the door open . However , my body was in front of it . Allison had her hands around my neck and was trying to choke me to death . I managed to reach up and grab the area of Allison 's adams apple with my fingers . I squeezed and turned . Allison immediately backed off and I moved so Lacy could get the door open . By this time , Allison was ready to lunge at me again . A friend of hers intervened and had to physically restrain her while I stumbled into the hallway with Lacy . I was livid and really wanted to tear Allison apart . However , I was coherent enough to be aware that if I did something to her , I 'd be kicked out of the SCHOOL . Nothing ever happened to either of us for the altercation . In fact , SCHOOL personnel had no plans to move either of us to new rooms . She had just tried to KILL ME and they acted like they didn 't care ! This was a huge blow to my already damaged self - worth . I slipped into a major depression . After days of tension , I finally stepped up and asked to be placed on another floor of the dormitory - away from Allison . My request was granted , but Allison continued to stalk me . She would frequently " gang up " with her friends and try to intimidate me . On at least 2 occasions , she & her friends ransacked my rooms . Vandalizing everything . I complained but nothing was ever done about it . My grades were already failing . We only went to studies on Monday , Wednesday , and Fridays . Tuesdays & Thursdays were reserved for lab & experiment days . Through the first semester , I think I missed something like 42 days of school ! I started to get physically ill , too . I began getting severe chest pains for which doctors could find no explanation . I also broke out in a bright red blotchy rash across my knees and lower legs . Again , doctors could find no explanation . I stopped eating and sleeping . I was suicidal and spent days locked in my rooms just crying . Eventually , SCHOOL personnel sent me to a psychiatrist . I spent several weeks with the psychiatrist and took a battery of tests . I felt so tired in my soul that I told the psychiatrist many things I would have never otherwise talked about . I told her about instances of child abuse in my life . I told her about the rape on campus . I told her about many things . She seemed to be compassionate about everything , but I think it was all a front . Within a few days , a conference was called with my mother . I was forced to sit in front of a panel of people along with my mother . I don 't know what the psychiatrist told them , but they told my mother that they questioned my mental stability and felt I could no longer stay at the SCHOOL . I was devastated and relieved at the same time . That day , I packed up my things and went back to that crappy little one - bedroom apartment where my mother lived . My mother signed me up for school ( half days ) at a local inner city high school . I was so depressed and cried a lot . I wanted to go back to my old high school , but was told that was impossible because I was now out of district . I hated the new high school . As a " new girl , " I gathered some attention . The popular kids decided that I would make a good addition to their crowd . I was asked out by one of the best looking guys in the school . I agreed but didn 't really " like " the guy . He frequently got on my nerves with his shallowness and falseness . I had sex with him on many occasions , but was by far from faithful to him . I had started back at my old job at a restaurant . I was frequently picking up older men . Some Russian , some doctors , lawyers , etc … Sex was always involved . I felt like a cheap whore . I was so depressed , but had no one to share my feelings with . Showing emotion was not tolerated in my home . I would frequently wait til my parents went to bed , then I 'd fill up a big glass full of straight whiskey and walk out the door . I 'd walk around the city all night long , by myself … . just drinking my sorrows away . I don 't remember ever being touched during these times … . which is probably a bloody miracle . Somewhere around this time , I ran into Mark . He was no longer with Jenny and hadn 't seen her in ages . He invited me out with him and his friend , Joe . We went to Joe 's house and spent the evening drinking whiskey in his bedroom . I ended up drunk and in a threesome with Mark and Joe . After that night , it became a common thing for me to be Joe 's booty - call . He expected me to be at his beck and call . I always complied . Sometime during the summer of 1992 , my mother decided to take me on a trip to California to see my grandfather . It would be the first time I had seen him since 1980 's , during our last visit when he remarried . My grandfather , now retired , owned a kiwi farm in rural northern California . Because it was warm , I was allowed to sleep out in a camper which was parked between the housePosted by Social Relationships I do not want to give the misperception that I did not have ANY friends . I had friends , but often these friendships had so many conflicting emotions tied to them that , at the end of the day , I didn 't know whether these individuals were truly friends or not . The subdivision where I grew up was laid out in a big square . The entrance to the subdivision came to a T where you could turn right or left , but either way eventually brought you around to the other side . Much like the female gender symbol , if viewed aerially , only with a square instead of a circle . If you turned to the right , you approached the townhouse apartments . If you turned to the left , there were normal stick - built houses . I lived in the very last townhouse apartment building . Surrounding our little subdivision were meadows , cornfields , and forests . A big 4 lane highway divided us from the most of the rural little town . There were about a dozen families with kids of various ages living in my neighborhood . I became best friends with a girl who was 2 years older than me named Polly . * * - side note . I do not remember my first meeting with Polly ( or any kids from that neighborhood for that matter ! ) , but she used to frequently talk about HER memory of our first meeting . According to her , I was all alone skating down the sidewalk on pink , plastic roller skates . I would have been around 5 or 6 years old at the time . She claims that everyone knew who I was because of my supposed notoriety from the dog attack incident . She said that she and a group of other kids saw me , recognized me , and all clamored around me while I was skating down the sidewalk because I looked so " fragile " and everyone was afraid I 'd hurt myself . Polly and I were frequently like two peas in a pod . I spent a lot of time at her house . Her mom was a nurse . Her dad worked for the post office but had ( at one time ) been in the military . She had an older brother , Sean , who was 2 years older than her ( 4 years older than me ) . Polly was all about ritual show . I can remember at least 3 occasions where we " traded blood " to become " blood sisters . " It was all done very formally and with a lot of flair and seriousness . Polly was also involved in our experiments ( and torture ) on animals . She loved animals as much as me , specifically her two dogs . I have many memories that surround events involving Polly and her family : I spent the night one time at Polly 's house when her parents had a party . It was mostly attended by her extended family and some adult friends . For the most part , Polly and I stayed in her bedroom . Occasionally , someone would come in the room and talk to us . Once , we snuck out into the hallway to take a look at the party . Polly 's aunt ( Rachel ) was lying unconscious on the floor . She was naked and people were doing sexual things to her . Polly and I quickly went back to the bedroom and pretended to be asleep . Around the time I was 11 or 12 years old , my uncle ( Barry ) moved from California to our town , bringing his young son , Zeke , with him . Zeke was 2 years older than me - about the same age as Polly . He was a very good - looking kid , very popular , and commanded a lot of attention from girls who always seemed to fall at his feet . When I introduced Polly to Zeke , it was love at first sight . Polly absolutely adored Zeke and Zeke absolutely adored Polly . The 3 of us often played together , along with another neighborhood boy named Jack who was my age . Sometimes , both Polly and Jack would spend the night at our house . By this time , Zeke and I shared a room in the basement of our townhouse . * * - side note . The room Zeke & I shared used to belong to my older brother , but he left home a few years earlier to go to college at [ redacted ] University . My brother was like the prodigal son in our family . He was my mother 's first born child and could do no wrong in her eyes . He was a very handsome , popular guy . He was also a star quarterback for the high school football team . I have very few memories of my brother other than he seemed to have it all . A beautiful girlfriend . He hung out with all the rich , popular kids . In regards to me , I remember he used to tease me rather cruelly . He would chase me around the house with pliers , threatening to pinch me with them . But worse than that , he used to chase me down , pin me to the floor , and tickle me until I either felt like I was going to suffocate or threw up . I would cry and scream hysterically , but he would just laugh at my distress . I hated it when he would do these awful things . I can also remember once when he hung me upside down from the upstairs balcony and threatened to drop me to the first floor where I 'd land on my head . Despite his teasing and psychological games , I still adored him just like everyone else did . Anyway , Zeke , Polly , Jack and I all generally had a great time together ; we were all very bonded , but there was also a lot of pressure and instances of " making out . " Sexual acts were always present . No one ever checked on us or seemed to feel that 2 pre - teen boys and 2 pre - teen girls sleeping together was inappropriate . Eventually , Polly and her family moved to a bigger ( and more rural & isolated ) home that was about 5 miles from my house . I was devastated that she was no longer so close , but I would still ride my bike to her house frequently or vice versa . Polly was at my house the night my family was changed forever . My brother had just turned 21 years old and was going out to party with his friends . Polly was spending the night at my house that night . We were doing some private ritual with candles . I can 't remember what … The phone rang . I got up and answered it . My older sister had also answered it on another phone . I listened as a man on other line asked for my mother . I heard my sister call out to my mother . I hung up the phone and went back to playing with Polly . Soon , my mother and sister came to tell Polly and me that they were leaving . I asked what was going on . My mother said " your brother has been in an accident . " My brother had MANY accidents in his young life and always seemed to escape unscathed . I shrugged it off and thought nothing of it . My mother and sister left , leaving Polly and I home alone . I don 't remember what happened next or when we fell asleep . I only know that when I awoke in the morning , the house was full of people . Polly 's dad was there to get her . Despite all the people being in the house , nothing seemed to register to me that something was off . With complete unconcern , I casually asked my mom how my brother was doing . At that point , she said " He 's dead . " She yanked me to her , squeezing me painfully hard , and broke down sobbing . I stood there in complete shock , not saying a word , and showing no emotion . Polly 's dad broke the silence by saying he was sorry and walking out the door . That would be the last time Polly was ever in my home . I think my brother 's death was a pivotal point of change in my friendship with Polly . Although we both tried hard to recapture our innocence or pretend nothing had changed , something was invariably , imperceptibly different . I was at her house the night she learned her mother had left her father for another man . We were playing hide and seek . Polly went to hide in her mother 's closet only to find it empty . I found her sitting on the floor staring into the empty closet . After that , her father became very verbally and physically abusive . He always seemed angry . I can remember him busting down the bedroom door and screaming at us . We were both scared of him . It was also around that time that Polly and I began a bizarre burning ritual . We would go into her bathroom and fill up the bathtub with scalding hot water . When the tub was full , we would both get into the water completely naked . No one was allowed to flinch or show any emotion or reaction to the scalding hot water . When the water cooled , we would drain the tub and re - fill it will more scalding hot water , repeating the ritual over and over . The ritual became a test to teach ourselves " discipline " and to " not react " to physical ( or emotional ? ) pain on our bodies . Things also changed for me at school around this time . Prior to my brother 's death , I had been a smart , but mediocre student . I think the reason I didn 't do well was because I didn 't like school . School equaled pain , humiliation , and loneliness in my mind . I felt ostracized from my peers and was frequently the object of teasing and bullying . I had few friends at school . All the kids from my neighborhood were either older or younger than me so I didn 't see them much at school . But something changed when my brother died . My mother , stricken with grief over my brother 's death , felt she could not cope with her children . For a still unknown reason , she sent my sister away to my aunt in California . My sister was 19 yrs old at the time . I was kept at home , but I may as well have been invisible for all I existed in her world . I was desperately hurting and confused . Something changed , unconsciously , in my mind and I decided I WANTED my mother to see me . I wanted to replace my brother as IMPORTANT in her eyes . I tried to be just like him . He was a star athlete . At the time , I played sports but was an average player . After he died , I started really applying myself to be the best of the best . I would frequently wake up around dawn and go run or work out . Soon , I had succeeded . I was an all - star softball player and captain of the cheerleading squad . But it wasn 't enough . My brother had been smart too . Before I had avoided school , now I was driven to succeed at it . Without even seeming to really try , I started to pull in straight A 's . My teachers and school administrators literally gushed over my accomplishments . My mother hardly ever seemed to take notice . When she did say something , it was usually a half - hearted " nice job … " and then I was forgotten about again . Each time , I would resolve to try harder . I pushed myself harder and harder to do better and be more impressive . After Polly 's mother left , things were truly never the same . Polly became very withdrawn , distant , and emotionally hurtful toward me . Sometimes she would band together with " other friends " and gang up on me to bully me around . I was subjected to some very hurtful and ugly teasing and bullying . I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her actions , but always found myself trying to justify her behavior . My soul felt torn apart but I convinced myself that it didn 't really matter because I couldn 't bear to lose Polly . Also during this time , Zeke changed too . He started picking on me mercilessly which would , frequently , turn into a physical altercation . Sometimes during the altercations , he was grab my genitals or stick his face between my legs while holding me down . At first , I was enraged and would fight back . Once , I bit him very hard on his back . He punched me so hard in the face that I saw stars . I went crying to my mom . She saw the bite mark on his back and I was punished for biting him . It became apparent that she didn 't want to be bothered with my problems and was no source of help for me . Bothering her meant nothing more than having verbal abuse and contempt heaped on my head . If I cried , she would tell me to " quit being a baby ! " or " Stop being so weak ! " Eventually , Zeke became more aggressive in his sexual abuse . The more aggressive and bold he became , the less I tried to fight it off . By the time I was able to drive , I simply submitted to his demands for sex and let him do whatever he wanted . After the disaster of what happened when I told about the sexual abuse with my Uncle Sam , I was hesitant to tell ANYONE about the things that were happening with Zeke . However , I felt that if anyone would understand , it would be Polly . After all , she had been my best friend since I was 5 years old . . . I approached her at school one day and pulled her aside in the bathroom . I told her what Zeke was doing to me . To my utter surprise and bewilderment , she got angry at ME . She said some very ugly and hateful tSex and sexual acts were frequently an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood and a " normal " part of my life . Most of it revolved around my next door neighbor . Her name was Wendy . She was about 5 or 6 years older than me . Wendy ruled the neighborhood like a queen over her kingdom . Everyone bowed down to and feared her . We also feared her father - an abusive , mean man . I can remember one incident where he beat her older brother with a thick , link chain . Wendy would select kids to meet at her home . If you were chosen , you did NOT disobey . Disobedience meant being ostracized in the neighborhood , an unthinkable punishment . She routinely chose the same boys and I frequently had the misfortune of being the only girl . At times , I think she would choose me as a punishment or with purposeful intent to cause me hurt and pain . We would show up at her house as scheduled . Sometimes her older brother and his friends would be there ( he was my older sister 's age and my sister LOVED him ) . Wendy would play demeaning sexual games . I was often embarrassed and humiliated . Sometimes things were a mass orgy . Other times , we were " paired off " and sent to particular rooms to engage in various sex acts . Summers were especially bad because this happened almost every day for hours . I know on at least 2 occasions , older grown men were brought into the house and serviced by Wendy or me . Sometimes drugs and alcohol were involved . While I can 't recall any specific proof of fact , I have strong beliefs that we were photographed and videotaped during these " sessions . " I feel like proof of this is tugging at my memory just beyond its reach . Sometimes I feel like I can " grasp " it and remember flashes of images of this occurring in Wendy 's parents bedroom ( decked out in a king size waterbed and very fancy ) , but then the image slips away again like a ghost . Next door to Polly 's old home lived a family of 5 boys . The boys were delinquents and frequently into drugs and trouble . These boys were almost ALWAYS at Wendy 's " parties . " The two oldest boys were closer to my older sister 's age . They were rarely around , but you could always count on one or more of the younger 3 to be there . The youngest one was at least 3 or 4 years older than me . At one time or another , I was forced into sex acts with all 3 of them . If I were alone , I would try to avoid them in the neighborhood if at all possible . If they managed to corner me alone , I could always count on being coerced into some sex act or another . I didn 't fight , with one exception : I was out playing in the meadows which surrounded the neighborhood . I was all alone . It was a beautiful , sunny day outside . I don 't remember how it happened , but I remember that the youngest boy , Luke , caught me unaware in the field . He grabbed me and dragged me to a place in the meadow where there was a stone slab . It was secluded and no one was around that I recall . The stone slab had pictures on it . The only picture I remember was a knife . On the blade of the knife were the words " RAPE " . I remember Luke pointing out that picture to me and asking me if I knew what it meant . I said no . Luke then pushed me down on the stone slab and pulled my clothes off . I didn 't fight him . He climbed on top of me while I just laid there . He whispered in my ear for me to fight him . Again , I just laid there . I must have made him angry because he began to choke me . At that point , I struggled and started to fight . He continued to choke me , also covering my mouth and nose , as he had sex with me . I remember him saying " yeah , baby … scream . Keep screaming . No one can hear you … " I was crying and truly thought I was going to die . I don 't remember how it ended . I don 't remember getting up . I don 't remember getting dressed or even how I got home . Years later , I had another incident with Luke . There was an old , decrepit barn where many of the neighborhood kids would congregate when we " snuck out " at night . Once when I was around 18 years old , I went to that barn in the middle of the night . I have no earthly idea why I went there by myself , especially as I hadn 't even lived in that neighborhood for several years ( we moved out when I was 16 , but I 'll get to that later ) . Luke was there . It was all very bizarre because I had not seen Luke for a long time . He pushed me up against the wall and had sex with me again . Before he did , I distinctly remember him telling me how much he had always liked me , loved me even . How he couldn 't seem to get enough and thought about me all the time . I remember wishing I could just gI can 't exactly pinpoint the timeframe when my " world " turned international , but at some point after my brother died I found an intense interest in other cultures , especially the Middle East , Europe , Australia , and Russia . I started checking out books from the library on other countries and even listened to Middle Eastern music . I was especially fond of the Oud and would become mesmerized by listening to it . Around the time I turned 13 or so , I became a part of the " International " club . I do not recall how I came to learn about this club or by whom . I simply remember filling out the application and choosing the countries with which I wanted to share my name and information . I went sent a list of 20 or so names back with individuals who I had been " paired " with from other countries . Some of those I remember - Stephan from ItalyKerry from IrelandCharles from EnglandMaria from Nigeria And others … . there was a girl from Spain , one from Lithuania , and one from Guyana . I wrote to all of them and established many friendships . I would send numerous letters and boxes overseas , sharing the intimacies of my life , culture and country , with those friends I had abroad . But the one I was , by far , the closest to was Kylie from Australia . Kylie and I became very close friends . We wrote to each other obsessively and even talked on the telephone whenever we could manage to do so . Kylie 's parents were divorced and she lived on a family - owned farm with her mother and younger brother . Kylie had two older siblings ( an older brother and sister ) who lived away from home . We promised to come visit each other someday . That " someday " came when I was about 16 years old . Kylie was going to be in the foreign exchange . I 'm not quite sure how it was managed , but somehow , my mother was able to request to be Kylie 's host family in the exchange . Kylie came to America one wintery snowy night . We were so happy to see each other that we cried , hugging each other for hours . Kylie had never seen snow so we ran outside in the midnight wonderland nearly the whole night . Kylie did attend my school , although only for a day . Strangely , the foreign exchange program was only for a period of about 6 weeks . The exchange officials allowed Kylie to stay with my family for 3 weeks and then insisted that she move to the state of Indiana to another host family for the last 3 weeks of her stay . I was very jealous because the other " host family " was very wealthy . They had a young daughter my & Kylie 's age who was fabulously beautiful and popular . The other family took Kylie on trips and to do things that my poor family could not do . I felt very scared and insecure that I would lose Kylie as my dear friend because I could not " compare " with the wealthy host family . A few months after Kylie , we received another foreign exchange " student . " Her name was Celia and she was from the Philippines . Celia had come to America with her sister , both as part of the foreign exchange , although her sister had been sent off to another family . Celia was very small and seemed very scared and fragile . I remember coming home from school the first day she arrived . She was sleeping on a bed on the floor of my room . She was so tiny that had I not seen her feet sticking out of the blankets , I 'd not have thought anyone was there ! Her frame was nearly indiscernible in the bed . Celia was much different than Kylie . Celia always seemed to avoid me , although she was not impolite . She did not want to talk to me and , seemingly , was not interested in being my friend . If I entered a room , she would immediately leave it . Celia frequently made phone calls from our house . I never knew who she called as she always spoke in Filipino but guessed it was her sister or family . Then one day , Celia disappeared from our house . I remember my mother telling me that Celia had gone to see her sister and her sister 's host family . I remember feeling disappointed that she continued to rebuke my overtures of friendship . After several days , Celia still did not come back . I remember my mother being very angry because she did not know where Celia was or whom she was with . I remember the day my mother notified the Exchange officials that Celia had " run away . " She seemed to be on the phone for hours , with whom , I don 't know . But later that evening , my mother told me that Celia and her sister were in a lot of trouble . She indicated that the rules of the exchange program were very strict and that Celia was not allowed to leave our home , speak in her native language , or EVER see her sister while she was here . My mother stated that Celia and her sister were to be deported back to the Philippines . After that incident , my mother refused to be part of the Exchange Program again . Exchange officials had been interested in sendinPosted by |
BC : Dear Teacher , I wish you knew this about me . . . My life is complicated and it 's hard to do schoolwork when I 'm worried about home . I 'm really quiet and shy , and I hate being in this huge building with thousands of people . You have had a tremendous impact on my life , and that 's why I want to become a teacher . I hate school . I hate being inside all day . I hate being around all these other people . I 'm depressed . My mom is suffering from breast cancer and I 'm afraid of losing her . My grandpa died recently . He was the one person in my life I could depend on . I don 't feel like I fit in anyplace here . My mom is getting ready to have surgery . I 'm afraid she 'll be like my uncle and think she 's better then fall on the floor dead . I can 't handle losing her . She is my best friend . My parents aren 't fighting as much now , and we are almost back to normal . My parents fight all the time . My mom takes it out on me and my brother . I am a terrible test taker . My palms get all sweaty . I second - guess myself and totally stress out . I 'm having problems with my stepdad . My real dad moved away without telling me . My dad is in prison for drugs . I haven 't seen him in two years , and my mom hates him . I don 't know who my dad is . My mom either doesn 't know or won 't tell me . I live with my older brother and never see my mom who 's nothing but a heroin addict . I hate her . My mom left when I was a baby . My dad isn 't much of a father . My grandma is raising me . My mom is a lesbian and she lives with my " aunt " . My dad doesn 't want custody of me . My mom is an alcoholic who has had so many wrecks she 's lost her license . There is no electric or water in our house . We have to move because we 're being evicted . . . again . I 'm afraid to go home in the evening because my dad is disabled and I 'm afraid he will have died while I was here and he was all alone . I worry about him all day . When I go home , I have so much to do that I don 't have time to do your homework . My mom works , my dad has another family , and I have to take care of my little brother and FC : Our Stories in Our Words Appalachian Teens Speak Out 1 : Every child deserves a chance to be heard and tell his or her story . Every adult should take the time to listen . We speak for ourselves or our friends who find their own stories too painful . Here are our stories . . . | Appalachian Teens share their stories | 2010 | Mrs . Lusher 's Kids CMHS 3 : What Makes a Family ? There once was a family of four , Till the day the father walked out the door . He said , " This isn 't where I want to be , Please let me go and set me free . " Then he said , " Goodbye " and made the family cry . The family of four was now down to three , and their future , they couldn 't see . The three didn 't know what to do . They left their home and the life they knew . So , to a new house they came . They were afraid life wouldn 't be the same . But they got up day by day , life didn 't seem so bad some way . Holidays were a little sad , But after awhile they weren 't too bad . Soon they began to laugh again . They opened the door and hope came in . Happiness now showed on their faces , And they began to like this new place . Life was suddenly bright and new . They planned other things to do . Then one day they could clearly see , This group of three was still a family . | My Brother See the boy sitting there all alone , At the park watching everyone . With the boy staring at the orange cone . Nobody would dare talk to him , no one . I asked him if he was ready to go home . Everyone laughed at him for being different . But nobody knew he was my brother . Everybody stopped laughing when they saw me . We went home . He started coughing , So I gave him some tea . He was better . | My Dad The phone rang ; the promise was made . Packing my bags in excitement , I couldn 't wait . A day at the park just me and my dad ; a day of fun and laughs . Sitting on the porch , I looked at my watch and back to the long narrow road . The sun was setting and my heart was too . With tears in my eyes , I told my mom , " He will be here soon . " I wish I was right just so I could prove her wrong . The tears kept falling down my face , till it felt like I was sitting in a puddle . I gave up on him ; I can 't wait forever . Years went by and I had a new dad . This dad cares about me and shows me his love . He takes me anywhere I want to go and we laugh . He showed me the love that I could never receive from the man I once called my real father . I don 't know him anymore , and he w5 : Girl All Alone Looking at her friends , she sees they have it all . The clothes , the boy , the car , the parents . . . But she 's all alone . No father and a dying mother is what she bears alone . But she hides it under lock and key . She dresses in black and sits in the back of the room . No one ever notices a girl who 's all alone . The tears she cries are no use to count . People seem to always point and stare . Just to make fun of the clothes she wears . Why does this girl feel so alone ? Even though she has many friends , a good house , and home ? Why don 't you ask the girl who 's all alone ? Believe me it would do you no good . She 'd simply put a smile on her face and say , " I 'm fine , what about you ? " That 's all from the girl who 's alone . Do you ever wonder what it would be like have no parents ? I don 't mean a few days , so you can have parties and trash your house from top to bottom . I mean the rest of your life with no parents . that thought crosses my mind almost every day when I go home . You see , I could be without parents instantly . Let me explain why . . . My dad is dead . He died two years ago from throat cancer . My mom is sick with everything under the sun . She has lupus and about fourteen other health problems . This means my mom can die at any moment . Lupus doesn 't care if you 're white , black , old or young ; it cares if it kills you . My mom wasn 't supposed to have more children after my brothers . I guess I was a miracle baby . If I wasn 't born , my mom would have no one to look after her . I 've made a difference to her . When she is sick and weak and can 't hold a fork , I feed her . When I sit alone in the hospital with her for three days straight , I make a difference . I just hope that I 'll be around long enough to make more differences before the lupus kills me too . 6 : Waiting I sit and await his arrival . The weekends are the only time I matter . I 've had my stuff ready for days . Now I wonder if he knows he 's late . It 's bad enough I only see him two days a week . Mom said I 'd never understand . I know I 'm young but I 'd like to know Why I hardly see him anymore . He used to tuck me in and read a story . Now I 'm lucky if he even shows up . I want to know if I did something wrong . I sit here alone as the clock strikes one . He 's four hours late and won 't answer his phone . He used to love me . He used to care . But I don 't think anymore love is there . The clock ticks . It 's way past my bedtime . But I still have the slightest hope I try to hold my eyes open . I try not to cry , But soon I can 't help but do both I now lie on my step silently crying myself to sleep . Whispering " Daddy , please come home . " | " All parents damage their children . It cannot be helped . Youth , like pristine glass , absorbs the prints of its handlers . Some parents smudge , others crack , a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces , beyond repair . " Mitch Albom | What He Learned from His Dad The birth at a far away land . Father wears a camo suit with a black gun in his hand . So proud he has a son But too drunk to keep a family . After returning to the hills The infant sees and knows . He grows with a father that is far , but close . They drift too far . His father gets a new family . The son loves the new but stays with the old of his mother . Grows in the woods in the mountains , And lives by the music that flows through his heart . He makes friends . He makes enemies . But as he grows , he learns to hate his father , Not from his mother but from his own soul . As he reaches the end of his child life and into his teenage years , He knows that when he 's ready , His child will love , respect , and see his father . 7 : How My Parents Damage Me Every parent on earth in some way has or will damage their child . Parents don 't spend time with the child or care about other things more than the child . I have that problem . My mom cares more about horses than me . It upsets me when she would rather go be with animals than her own flesh and blood . I don 't understand . Nothing of it makes sense to me . It honestly leaves me not wanting to even talk to her and just go out with my friends . When she wants to do something with me and I don 't , she gets mad , but apparently it 's different when she doesn 't have time for me . But I 'm supposed to make time for her . Abandonment is a problem for me , too . This seriously messes with my mind . I even go to counseling because of it . My thoughts are tortured by someone who is not even in my life anymore and hasn 't been for a while . I 'm guessing my glass is shattered . My dad has left me long ago , but is still living close by . I see my stepsister everyday in homeroom and wonder how great her life is . Apparently , it 's wonderful by the way she brags . I see my dad constantly , but he doesn 't see me . I can seriously relate to the quote by Albom . | Fear | Fear Fear is gray . It smells like uncooked meat And tastes like raw potatoes Looks like moldy bread and feels like failure . 8 : Teenage Pregnancy Where do I go from here ? You told me you would always be there through thick and thin . I thought you loved me , I guess not . Now my life has changed And yours is exactly the same . I gave it up for you . What a mistake that was . Wish I could go back and had left instead , But I had to listen to your stupid lies . Our future you planned is gone now . All because of you , I sit and cry . I should have listened to my mother . We all live with regrets and this is mine . I now have to raise a kid when I am still one . Thanks to you is all I can say for what you Put me through . | It was supposed to be just a kiss Just a little kiss , that was all . Then the kiss became more More I was not ready for . Now I have another life inside of me A growing bump has become my stomach . Now he does not even speak to me . I feel so all alone , this is not how it is supposed to be . I am no longer a kid because I have a child of my own . I did not listen to others ; I did not listen to my own heart . I awoke the next morning and was an adult . 11 : Family Night Mom and Dad are never together . They said that they would last forever . Brother cries while Daddy drives away . Mom doesn 't know what to think . A window above the kitchen sink Where Mom stands while she keeps Dad banned . Baby cries as things fly at one another . Sissy tries to help but she doesn 't know what to do . Nothing at all . . . not even a clue . Everyone hides in Sissie 's room . All we hear is screaming and yelling . We all just want them to quit . Dad blames Mom . Mom blames Dad . Mommy cries and Dad doesn 't care at all As the tears come from her bare eyes . Dad leaves as Mom screams for him not to . No one 's happy , but we want to be . | Coming Home The night you came You could hardly talk . It wasn 't the same . I had to help you walk . Your breath smelled bad Just like the beer you had . I tried to help you But you fought with me . You made it to the house . But fell before you could get in . I wanted to escape like a mouse . But then I helped you so you wouldn 't commit a sin . You pushed me away Thinking you could do it yourself . Then I helped you again . Not knowing what to say . 13 : A bully 's words are like drugs , sinking into the body until it is all you think about . They are like a lion , Teasing its prey until it goes in for the kill . Like a murderer , They kill all your happiness . | Helpless In a dark alley , no one can hear me . I wish someone would come to my rescue I can 't breathe ; tell me what I should do ! If I don 't find out soon , then I will die . I can 't feel myself , I feel as if I am dying . . . . Don 't hurt me . I am just a helpless child . I 'm scared for my life now . And , it 's all because of you . You are the one that did all of this to me . One day you will pay and the Lord will come and punish you . Can you not hear my plea ? I wish things were the same . They will never be like they were . Can you not understand that I can forgive but I will never forget . I am taken away from my breath . That night that you hurt me in that dark alley I wish that you could understand the way that I feel . Feel my pain . 16 : Cool is Blue Cool is the color Blue It tastes like Raspberry Jolly Ranchers . It makes me feel refreshed and new . My favorite color is blue The Dallas Cowboys are blue . Blue is my true color . | Life in West Virginia My life began in New Martinsville . My life did not begin so well My parents abused my sister and me I was the first one to be abused . The State Police came in and took me . My life now in West Virginia is great . I have a wonderful mother and father . They love me for who I am We own a cabin in the mountains where all the bears and other wild animals live . We love being outside in the air Of the wild and wonderful West Virgina . I love living in West Virginia . | Living in West Virginia When I Was Young It was fun with many things to do . . . fishing , hunting , and horseback riding . We went coon hunting . . . a popular sport . When we weren 't hunting , we were fishing or doing something outside . Everyone helps each other , and I can trust our neighbor because he 's , most of the time , my best friend . If we have a problem , we go and fight , but won 't just run our mouth . When the county fair comes around , we wouldn 't miss it for the world ; that is something to look forward to every fall . In winter we go hunting and when we aren 't hunting , we take our family and play in the snow with sleds . 17 : Living in West Virginia is such a scare And having a girl sixteen and pregnant is hard to bear . Down in Huntington you could get shot , Up in Charleston there are race dogs and slots . Friday night football games are such a big deal , Passing Mrs . Turman 's tests just doesn 't seem real . Rednecks are just around the corner , With the mine disaster , many are left to be mourners . Bullies are always in sight , Victims hold their head up with all their might . Chuck Yeager , known to have been first to travel faster than sound , International arrivals at the airport seem to be out of bound . We can 't afford a new state name , As Virginia 's is practically the same . This state isn 't so bad , If you 'd visit , I 'd be kind of glad . | My heart awakened as I heard the tractor , smelled the fresh grass , and saw my favorite brown and white horse , Diamond . | Reflection The blacks of my eyes The stains where I 've cried . The bitten fingernails , nervous habits stay . Since when am I the person who has nothing to say ? I don 't like to look into you for I become unglued . I can 't believe the person I 've become . You reflect my every impulse . You show me what 's true . Tell me , one more time , I am not like them . My figure 's too small . My skin is translucent . I pray this is simply a nightmare . I was slipped hallucinogens . This is not who I am . this was not who I was meant to be . Mirror , Mirror , on the wall , Who 's the fairest of them all ? Not me . 18 : The cuts on her arm Reflect what 's going on inside . Hate and pain within . | My Life My life was a messed up kind of life . I 'm adopted . My mom is a drug addict . My dad 's kind of an alcoholic . It was a rollercoaster with no end . But I guess that 's the way God wanted it to be . I go to church , and I 'm a Christian . Drug and alcohol free . I love my life now . At least I got people who care for me . | I was lonely that summer . There was only her beside me . The fan whirled . The temperature in the air rose . My stepfather was drunk . My mother was at work . That 's the first time I killed . I fell into her spell . Little magic trick with a vanity mirror . My stepfather died . She 's the only one who knew . Now I 'm her prey . | I | Happiness is a party with good friends . it is your favorite song coming on the radio . It is a cold Coke in a hot afternoon . It is making it inside before the rain starts . It is a soft kitten and its " mew ! " It is curling up in bed with a good book . It is the ultimate treasure . 19 : Rain It whispers quietly Knocking on my roof Like little feet Dancing on the ceiling . Slowly at first Then harder ; it follows me Everywhere I go and never stops . | Lying Lying is a dull color It smells like rotted food Tastes like sour milk And sounds like frightened chickens It makes you feel like an idiot | Fire The fire comes in very fast . It roars like a lion over field and brush Swaying like a dance . Finally , it 's out . | The warmth of the sun Chases the darkness away And kisses my cheek . 20 : Mommaw and the Long Goodbye My grandmother was an important part of my life . She always had time for me and she was always there . My grandmother was a true Christian . She knew her Bible and lived the Christian life every single day . Mommaw had a faith like no one I have ever known . She also had a lot of patience . I don 't remember ever seeing her mad or hearing her say anything bad about someone . I used to go to her house and play . We would pretend we were on an airplane , watch movies , and camp out in the livingroom . Those times are some of my best memories . About four years ago , Mommaw started changing . At first , she would just forget little things . Then she started forgetting important things . It kind of scared me . She had always been strong . Then she fell and broke her hip . After that , she really wasn 't the same . She went to a nursing home . I hated seeing her there , and I didn 't like to visit . I would go with my family and sometimes she didn 't know our names . All she could say was that we looked familiar . I couldn 't understand how she couldn 't know us . We were family . My parents always said that Alzheimer 's Disease is truly the long goodbye . I now believe that . Mommaw died in November and I hated saying my final goodbye to her . I try to remember what she was like before Alzheimer 's and that is how I want to remember her . To honor her , I want to be a good Christian . I want to be nice to everyone . 21 : Beautiful Sky I heard a ding The intercom called me out of class . Why was I leaving ? I put my books away . Spring break starts today . I could hear my mom crying . Something was wrong . She held me tight . Mom told me the news . Grandma had died that morning . I wanted to faint . I cried so hard . We prayed so much . Why didn 't it work ? But when I woke up the next morning , I was a different person . Grandma was in a better place . Jesus called her home . Now she is with Grandpa , too And every day I look up at the sky and smile . No wonder the sky is so beautiful . It 's because she 's in it . | Snapshots of my grandfather My grandpa sits in his wooden swing holding me as a tiny baby . He wears that old denim outfit with his Labor Union hat propped up . His glasses , shaded from the sun , let me know he is cool . The buzz of the blade on my hair keeps me intent . My grandpa sits in the chair . He is making jokes and reading the daily newspaper which occupies him as he waits for me . His cellphone rings , but he ignores it for my needs . The loud blast from the twelve - gauge rattles his hearing , but he still has a smile . Seeing the turkey flipping midair is remarkable to him . I hold up the downed game with my hands as he takes a picture . He actually has time to spend with his grandson . The engine revs up with my foot on the throttle . He hands me some cool shades . As we cruise Huntington checking out the scene , I know he feels cool when I 'm with him , but I know he is nervous that I 'm behind the wheel for the first time . That same truck comes down the street as fast as it will go , without me in it this time . His slurred words make no sense , but the beer on his breath says it all . He yells at me , but I just move on . I miss the old grandpa . 22 : Going Back and Forth To keep me from crying My mom cooked my favorite meal . I sat in the kitchen and watched Knowing that I wouldn 't be able to for a while . The real reason I was upset is still foggy . I just knew I didn 't want to go with my dad . I remember not wanting to pack all my stuff and not wanting to go . But now I sit and talk to my cousin Telling him that it 'll get better . And that I know how he feels . Going back and forth between parents is aggravating . It 's also rather annoying . But some people have to And as a kid there 's not much we can do . Just go along with it . And remembers it 's not forever . | Helpless and Afraid He came to my room Saying " I have something to show you " Everyone in the house was sound asleep So out of my room I flew . I said " No , " but he took off my clothes And took total control of me An older , sweaty boy over me Is something I thought I 'd never see . I felt a tear run down my cheek . I tried to ignore the pain and stay quiet So no one would hear . Mother 's anger was my only fear . It was sick and disgusting . I wanted him to stop more than anything . All my happiness dropped . He finally quit and said , " Get away . " I crept back to my room and lay bleeding and in pain . I wanted to die . The feeling was indescribable . I promised myself I 'd never tell anyone . Helplessness is all I feel . But I will eventually heal . 23 : Run , Baby , Run Hide , baby , run ; Daddy 's home . Mommy 's in the bathroom - - run fast as you can . You 've seen this act , the play of perfection When Mommy gets drunk And Daddy takes action . The words and tears . . . all embed fear . Run , baby , faster , quick as you can . You 're the perfect child , thrown into a tragedy Of teenage love - - and irresponsibility . Drinking and smoking , Leaving a twelve year old alone To take care of himself while nobody 's home . Daddy 's upset because Mommy told a lie . Now run baby run - - and find a safer place to hide . She tries to play Mommy and keep her responsibilities , And covers up for those who can 't . Secrets inside ; a box full of times , she wishes she had never seen . Her face stays happy , and her head stays high . She works hard for what she earns . Excuses for mistakes - - she decided not to make , Because she knows she 's the only master to her game plan . | His Face The bruises on his face Could make a grown man cry ; His shirt is filthy ; They had no time for him . His dad would get up And not sit down until Bruises appeared . 24 : Eyes I look up into your cold dark eyes . No love but hate , I realize . You abuse me ; you hurt me and my soul . I just want love in this world . The police don 't help ; no one will . I guess I 'll have to learn your habits . Pass them down to my next lab rabbit . Treat them like you treat me ; it 's all I know . The hate in this world grows and grows . | Shadow I am dull and have no limitations . Whenever the sun shines , I 'm there . I 'm not perfect ; nobody is . I come in all shapes and sizes . Most of the time I lie on the ground Or lean on the side of a building . I follow you almost everywhere you go . I am dark . I carry your lies and sins . I know everything you do . For it is my job . | Tesla Parent | Car Crash In an unstable pitch that sounded like nails on a chalkboard , Mom slurred , " What do you want to eat ? " At this point she was already fifteen minutes late picking me up from practice , and I knew from much experience that this was going to be a long and wild night . I had gotten out of the locker room as quickly as I could . Mom wasn 't there , so I decided to go back in the school and watch the cheerleaders practice . I watched two different routines , one in which a very pretty blond almost dropped one of the younger girls on her face . By this time , I 'd been sitting there for at least fifteen minutes , and my butt was numb . I decided to walk back out to the parking lot and see if she had shown up . She hadn 't . Swearing under my breath , I started to make my way back to the gym . Suddenly , I heard the sound of screeching tires as if someone had hit his brake too fast . I whirled around to face my mother 's beat - up old Mustang that badly needed a new paint job . She slowly rolled down the window and said in a hushed tone , " Hey , Babe , get in . " As I seethed and entered the car , I told her I wanted McDonalds . " Mom , are you alright ? " I asked in a concerned voice . " Are you on something ? " Then I watched in shock as her head hit the steering wheel . The old car roared and began to accelerate rapidly ; we must have been going about 80 mph when I25 : The silver Sharpie likes to draw And his pictures are scary . He puts a permanent mark on all that he touches . He slides across the paper Like a slippery banana peel And makes it known that he was there . | Snapshots of my dad The world spins around as Dad picks me up and twirls me . It 's been days since I last saw him , but it feels like forever . His lips press against my right cheek and I carelessly giggle loudly . I feel his prickly beard as I try to give him a bigger kiss . This was the first time I rode the bus to my dad 's house . A smile automatically appeared when I saw him holding my little sister 's hand . I got off and saw my sister 's red curly hair , brown eyes , and small body run towards me . My dad was standing there , smoking a cigarette , and laughing . I smell his horrible breath as he picks me up and kisses me . I waited for him to call . He hasn 't called in over two months . He finally calls and tells me , " Sis , I miss you and I 'm gonna pick you up today so get ready . I love you . Tell Pookie I love her , too . " I tell my sister to pack some clothes because Daddy is picking us up . We waited three hours , and he never showed up . It was just another broken promise . He called me and my sister and told us he had a new girlfriend , and he has place to stay for a while . I was the first one to meet her . I knew that she wasn 't good for him . The last girlfriend had helped him with his addiction , but this one is making it worse . He didn 't spend any time with me or my sister while she was around . We spent most of our time there watching television . I brought my laptop to his house , so his girlfriends ' children could play on it . It stayed with me the whole time because my mom told me to never take my eyes off of it . My dad told me he spilled coffee on it , so he had to take it to the repair shop . I didn 't see any coffee , and it was working fine . Two months later , I find out he pawned it for money to buy drugs . Now I refuse to talk to him , and he never tries to call me . . . 26 : Children are like mountains . They start off as a hill and gradually get bigger . As they mature , they blow up all over everyone around them . The real problem is when someone starts drilling into them . They become weaker and weaker for every foot drilled and eventually collapse . They turn to dust , never to stand tall . That is what child abuse does to children . | Dad , Please Change Everyone has secrets ; some are good , and some are bad . My secret is bad . My parents provide for me , care for me , and protect me . My dad , however , has shattered me into pieces . Since the beginning of my life , I have never been able to make my own decisions , according to my father . Every wrong move I make , he will catch it and act upon it . Most times , he will yell , yell , YELL . Often my family believes that he tries to find things to yell about . Almost every day , he finds something he does not like . Everything has to be his way , or his voice will be heard . Sometimes , I cry myself to sleep from the fury he pushes at me . My crying isn 't always for me though ; it 's for my mother . At the end of the day , when he has not found anything to make him mad , he will yell at my mother . Sometimes , it is about how fat he thinks she is , and other times it 's about how little she does . Anyone knows that being a mother is no little job . My mother works all day and when she comes home , her work is never over . I have thought of running away , but then I would think of my mother , whom I love dearly . Often I feel like my dad is going to hit my mom , but he hasn 't . . . yet . Other times I feel bad for wanting my dad to hit my mom just so it can be over , and he can go to jail . My life at home is portrayed differently than at school . At night , I pray and pray that God will change my dad and his way , but he is always the same . Hate is a very strong word , and it is hard not to use it . My father has shattered my whole family . His ways never work and never will . My father is my hate , my fury . Honestly , I wish he would change . | How I Made a Difference I made a difference t27 : Missing My Dad When I was seven years old , my father swooped me up in his arms and took me into the lane . Hockey pads neatly lined the timbers in front of the goal . I was ecstatic that my father had finally fulfilled my wish to be a goalie in hockey , just like him . He helped me put everything on , and we spent the whole day outside playing together . He introduced me to my favorite sport . Six years passed , we only speak to each other at the dinner table . even then , all that ever pierces my ears is the harsh criticizing which overflows from his mouth , accompanied by the gentle orchestral music drifting out of the Bose . " You never do anything to help around the house ! All you do is watch the boob tube and shovel food into your bottomless pit of a stomach . " This month , my father 's parents flew in for a visit . My mom is completely insane and has migraines every day because they try to operate our house like their own . My dad does nothing about their commanding nature , even though he knows my mother is in pain . To make it worse , he invited my grandparents to go on vacation with my parents which is going to make my mom 's vacation hell . My father does not support any of my activities anymore , except to write the check for lessons . I am not sure that I even have a father . All I have is a financial supporter and pain in the donkey . I wish so much to play hockey again , so we can find common ground once again . 28 : Knowledge is violet It sounds like doors opening Tastes like success Smells like new beginnings And it feels like accomplishment ! | During the Westest , I was thinking about . . . how retarded it is to make these tests count toward graduation getting out of school and summer my girlfriend and , so I couldn 't concentrate because I 'm afraid I 'll lose her " Oh my gosh , I could use a nap right now ! " how stupid and boring this is how cold the room is and why this building is never comfortable how there is stuff on the test that we haven 't done in class yet but it 's still going to determine if I pass or fail in high school how weirdly the questions are worded and how some seem like opinions what I am going to do for my birthday this weekend how much I had to go to the bathroom how much I just want this to be over because I 'm sleepy mostly what I 'll do when I get home my sick horse going home to play my video games doing the homework that I did not do last night dragons and a song called " Boulevard of Broken Dreams " my best friend who moved and how much I miss her the boy I really like who likes someone else my cousin just found out he has leukemia how i can 't remember any of this stuff and wish I were home whether my dad will call this weekend going to the beach this summer how long these days are and how bored I am if I should tell the counselor about what happened at home last night where I 'll live if Mom and Dad get divorced why no one ever believes kids | Morning I am golden and almighty Though you may not think so . I have a green thumb . I can grow and open beautiful flowers . I work with the mirror ; It 's my day job , you see . Everyone hates me . They always yell when they see me . Sometimes I tell you things You may not want to know . And I 'm sorry for that . I 'm only trying to be helpful . 29 : What Measures a Child ? What measures a child ? Is it his score on a standardized test ? Is every child standard ? Does every child have a " standard " home ? " Standard parents " ? Can we measure him by his smile which might be just a mask ? Do we measure him by what 's in his eyes which might be haunted by memories ? A child is made of more than frogs , snails and puppy dog tails or tests that measure his mood on a particular day . A child should be measured by what he 's survived . Does he still get up and put on clothes after a night of no sleep in a house with no heat where he went to bed hungry ? Does he come to school with head hung low because his father has told him . . . yet again . . . that he 's worthless and was a mistake ? Does he sit in class when his skin itches from dirty clothes and fleas because Mom ran off with someone else and took the washer and dryer with her ? Does he feel abandoned by everyone ? Is he jealous of friends who seem to have it all ? Is he tortured by feelings of loneliness and depression ? Is she made of sugar and spice and everything nice or is she decorated with a history of scars and pain ? Why did her mom marry a pedophile ? Does her mom even know she did ? Why did her dad divorce her when he divorced her mom ? Why doesn 't he call or come to see her . . . ever ? Do we measure her by the number of times she 's been slapped in the face , humiliated , sexually abused ? Do we measure her by the tears she 's shed over her parents ' battles , the number of plates and dishes smashed or doors slammed ? How do we measure a child ? Politicians say it 's all about the test scores . Teachers say it 's all about the child ! Teachers say , " Let 's help him cope . Let 's teach him to survive . Let 's show him love and compassion . " Politicians say , " Add more rigor ; make teachers teach them the standards . That 's what 's important . Let 's cut their pay if they don 't fix them all . " Teachers say , " They have enough rigor in life . Let 's make their time in school a refuge . Let 's show them they can find a better path . They can ride out the storm . Sizes : |
Take off the icing she says to me holding out her cupcake . Are you sure I ask , certain I must have heard her wrong . Take it off ! she says again . I take the cupcake from her and lick at the icing . All of it ! she says . I pause . Then I scrape all the brown sugar icing off the top of the cupcake with the index finger of my right hand and hand the cupcake back to her . I stand sheepishly nibbling the large dollop of icing off my finger . I glance around quickly to see if any of the other parents at the birthday party notice me . As I sweep my gaze around the park , I catch sight of the boy sitting at the blue metal picnic table across from his sister . He is eating his cupcake . More accurately , he is contemplating eating his cupcake . Before he spurns it in favour of the play structure he manages to rub some of the brown icing on his new blue shirt already stained with pizza sauce , chalk and sand . Do you want to play ? the girl asks . My girl stands mute , uncertain what to say . She isn 't often asked to play at the park . She usually knows all the other kids and so they just play without questions . Before my girl can answer the other girl has run across the park towards her mom . Back again she comes holding an inflatable beach ball and asks again Do you want to play ? My girl nods and follows her new friend towards the empty wading pool where they throw and kick the ball together . My four year old and her new six year old friend traverse the entire park in their play . They swing on swings . They hunt for treasure on the small play structure . They race back and forth across the pool . For close to an hour they play together . As I sit quietly watching the boy happily putter in the sand and the girl chase after her new friend I decide that she needs to play with more six year old girls . A six year old can keep the play moving and changing and fresh for a four year old with an endless amount of imagination . At least this six year old girl can anyway . At one point the six year old tells my girl that it is time for a snack . She herds the girl , and eventually the boy too , over to the kid sized picnic table so she can share her snacks . The three of them sit in a row with their backs to the table as they dip their hands into a Ziploc bag of potato chips . I watch the girl and imagine how happy she must be . A cool morning at the park . She wears an ocean blue halter sun dress with purple tropical flowers around the bottom . He wears long pants and a black and while striped zebra fleece . The hood is pulled up and the black ears point towards the overcast sky . I sit nearby thinking about my afternoon dentist appointment . She clutches the small tray of sushi we had bought at the corner store . We pass the time . They come to me with their mouths open . Sitting at the computer eating my bowl of porridge I stop typing long enough to deposit bits of cold porridge in their mouths with a fork . The girl comes first , always first , and her brother waits patiently while she lifts her head towards me for her bite . When it is his turn I lower the fork to drop the cooked oatmeal on his tongue . Mouths full they turn and run back through the kitchen towards the front of the house . Fall has snuck up on me . One day it was hot and I was sitting by the edge of the wading pool watching the girl splash around and then the next day a cold wind had blown in and the pool was deserted . The sky was overcast and the rain smelled like the end of summer . Then the pool closed and that was that . Every day is bringing us one day closer to Fall . I have grown to love Fall . The cooler weather is so welcoming after the heat of the summer . The long sleeves feel cozy against the chilly days . The red leaves I see out the window make me smile . I didn 't used to love Fall . It meant the return to school and mixed emotions . Excitement about being in a higher grade . Nervousness about new teachers and what they might expect . Happiness at seeing old friends after a long summer . Wariness of frenemies and tension from last year . Joy at being one year older . Now it 's Fall again and I am filled with some of those same mixed emotions . Excitement about the girl starting kindergarten . Nervousness about how it will go and if she will like it . Happiness that she will have friends in her class and that she will make new ones . Wariness of the tensions and struggles that come along with friends . Joy that she is one year older . Sadness too . I find myself looking at her sometimes and wondering who she is . Her tall , lean body . Her long face devoid of any babiness . Her vocabulary that she uses to cajole and explain and demand . Her pink backback worn constantly in anticipation of school . The first year , the girl turned two . I was pregnant with the boy and my huge belly felt like it was strained under one of the few summer tops that still fit me . We invited lots of friends . We had lots of food . The kids were handed pails and shovels when they arrived and sent off to play . There was cake . I loved it and decided that this is what a party should be . The next year , the girl was three and boy almost one . He wore his blue striped romper and walked around the park holding onto my two fingers . Our friends were there and so were the girl 's . Most of our extended family were there . There was too much cake and lots of wasps . This year , the party was small . Us . Old friends . New friends . Most of the kids were the girl 's friends and their brothers , who are also the boy 's friends . I was at the park early hiding cut out letters of the alphabet for our scavenger hunt . A friend helped me transport all our supplies to the park in our wagon . The husband frantically cleaned our messy house in case the rain didn 't hold off until after the party and we needed to return home for cake . The rain didn 't hold off . A light drizzle fell throughout the party but we all ignored it . The kids hunted for letters , decorated their snack bags and threw the sad looking piñata we had made in the air like a basketball to break it open . There were healthy snacks and once again , too much cake . There was walking hand in hand with friends , lots of hugs and impromptu picnics on the ground of snacks dumped out of snack bags . Like any good party there were tears . The husband took the boy home when his repeated crying told us it was nap time . I took the girl home when she started crying about not being passed the soccer ball . The party broke up . Until next year . I wasn 't sure how things were going to go when the boy woke up from his nap shortly before two pm . I was expecting the babysitter to arrive any minute and worried that my quick departure would startle a still sleepy boy . Guess whose coming over ? I finally said to him while he sat on my lap . Before I could answer the girl happily told him that her old preschool teacher would be coming over to babysit . He didn 't say much , just snuggled his head deeper into my shoulder . At five after two I thought I had better prepare him again . She 's going to be here soon I said . Should we go to the front window and watch ? Without answering he climbed off my lap and ran to the front window . Before I made it out of the kitchen I could hear him screaming though the open window Aaaaeee ! Jooooo ! His sister soon joined him . They sat perched on the back of the couch , faces pressed against the screen , yelling for a good for ten minutes until she showed up . She was late , but I was amused so I didn 't mind . The package was already in the mailbox when we went to leave the house . I grabbed it before she noticed and threw it behind me as I closed the door . Good thing too , because it proved a useful distraction when we walked back in the front door from the park where I had denied her a bag of chips being sold at the park BBQ . Sitting on the floor of my room I used a pair of scissors to open first her envelope and then the boy 's box . What is it ? she asked as she pulled the folded pink material free . It 's your new backpack for school I said . It is your birthday present from Poppa Bruce and Mo . Ooo , she said and slipped her arms through the straps . I helped the boy free his early birthday gift from the box and the wrapping . What is it ? I asked him . May - ee he said hugging his favorite book character . The boy loves Maisy . He will always pick a Maisy mouse book over anything else . The girl wore her backpack most of the afternoon . She even filled it with books . I told her she couldn 't take it to the park with her . Even though she wanted to show it off to her friends , she relented . The boy carried Maisy around too , but he wasn 't as attached to her as I thought he would be . When I put the doll on his bed at nap time he got irritated . Mine he said as he threw Maisy to the floor and climbed into his bed alone . There was a discussion about these new gifts at bed time . The girl wanted to sleep with her backpack . We suggested she put in on the floor at the end of her bed , beside her bed , at the top of her bed . We countered with on her bed but at the foot of her bed . Finally we gave in with promises to each other to sneak in later and move it . She fell asleep with it tucked into the corner of the bed and the wall , right by her head for easy reach . We asked the boy if he wanted to sleep with Maisy . Once again he threw her off his bed and onto the floor . Poor Maisy . The room is dimly lit except for the bright spotlight shining on me . I sit hunched over with my head resting on the cold metal table , arms outstretched in front of me . Waiting . The door opens and she walks in . I listen to the sound of her bare feet feet as she moves across the room . She pauses briefly in front of the two way mirror I had tried hopelessly to peer through earlier . When she reaches the table she scrapes back a chair and climbs up onto it . You 'll never defeat me she continues . I will wear you down until you are begging me for mercy . Give up now and it will all be over so quickly , she coos softly to me . Really ? she asks me . How much longer can you hold out ? Hmm . let 's see , shall we she says as she grins at me . Mum , mum , mum ! she whines at me from across the table I 'm hungry ! No , I don 't want to eat an apple . No , I don 't want a cracker . I 'm hungry for something else . I want something different . Something new . Something good . I want ice cream . No I haven 't had ice cream in a really , really long time . I 'll have it today and then I 'll never ever have it again . I promise . Yes , it is good for me to have ice cream ! Mum , mum , mum ! Mama ! Mama ! I want to paint . Now ! I want to paint now . I don 't want to have a bath , I want to paint . I know , I know . How about this . This is a good idea . How about I paint and you have a bath . Because painting is funner then a bath . How about I paint for ten minutes and then have a bath . But ten minutes isn 't a long time . I can paint really fast . Or we could skip a bath and have one tomorrow . Mama ! Mama ! I cringe as her words wash over me . Be strong I tell myself , be strong . Inhaling deeply I think of all the mothers that have come before me . I will be strong for them . I stare her in the eye . I will always be your mother . You will listen to me . You will respect me . You will stop whining and making demands and negotiating every simple request I make of you . You will , I continue as my voice rises , listen when I ask you to go upstairs and use the toilet instead of peeing in the training potty in the living room ! My forceful declaration exhausts me and I lean back in my chair . Let 's stop all this I say . Nothing you do will break me . Oh , really she asks with a smile . Let 's see shall we . With that she turns her head to the door . Confused , I follow her glance and am surprised to see the door open . In walks a smaller , male version of her . He runs across the room and flings himself onto the seat of the chair before pulling himself up to sitting . He wore her red ladybug rain coat , the sleeves rolled up , and her hand - me - down yellow rain boots . She wore her too small pink polka dot rain coat and blue buckle shoes . They peddled their bikes across the basketball court in the rain . She rode her two - wheeled pink bike with training wheels that don 't both touch the ground . He sat and pushed his feet to propel his multi - coloured tricycle forward . He can reach the peddles , but he prefers not to try . I stand and watch them . Feeling tired from the boy 's 4 : 30 am morning risings . Feeling guilty that while I wake , I usually go back to sleep while the husband heads downstairs with the boy . Feeling overwhelmed . I can hear the rain outside the bedroom window . I brush her wet hair while she sits in front of me on her bed . The husband discusses pajama options with the boy . I give her kisses once the two French braids are finished and tuck her into bed . I pretend to kiss the boy and he squeals in delight . Same kids . Same me . Different moment . I went away for a few days and when I came back you were different . Not bigger . Well , maybe just a little . Not taller . No more then an inch anyway . Not older . How could you be , I was only gone for five nights . But different . Remember when you were my baby ? I do . We brought you home from the hospital and I was terrified I was going to break you . I lay you against my chest , you head resting on my shoulder , and I worried about all the ways I could mess up your life or you could hate me even as I gazed lovingly at you . You were beautiful . People would stop me as I walked down the street just to tell me I had a beautiful baby . But I already knew . I knew as soon as I looked into those deep blues eyes that never seemed to close , not even to sleep . And why would they when there was so much life to be lived . Remember when you were a toddler ? You finally let go of the one finger you liked to clutch as you walked when you were fourteen months old . It was Thanksgiving weekend and I laughed so hard to see you walk ; almost as much as I laughed when we taught you to crawl by moving a chocolate milkshake back and forth across the room . You went from crawling to walking to running . Usually with a smile on your face , except when you decided that a deep scowl would be more appropriate . But even that face made me laugh . It is hard to believe that the boy is almost the same age you were when he was born . You seemed so old to me then . Now I look and you and I look at him and he seems so young . From the beginning you loved him like I hoped you would . Being a big sister can be hard sometimes , but I always think how lucky he is to have you . While I have seen you use your birth order to your advantage , you always look out for him . He repays you with complete and utter love . How lucky you are to have him . Remember when you were a preschooler ? I do . I am holding onto this last few moments as hard as I can . Kindergarten starts in a few weeks and while I anticipate that you will be nervous and scared those first few days , your excitement now is contagious . You make me wish I was four so I could take your hand and walk with you into your classroom and this new part of your life . Instead I will watch from the front stoop as you climb the steps of the school bus and drive off without me . I will watch as you become bigger and taller and older . I will remember all those yous from before , the ones that you might want to dismiss as childish or silly as you get older . But those yous will be with me always . Even as you stand in front of me at four I still see my baby . I overlooked the boy reaching his hand into the freshly flushed toilet bowl and then licking his fingers . I washed him off and tried to keep going . It was when he reached those wet hands into the sand used to hold cigarette butts at the front door of the field house that I snapped . We are going home I said as I grabbed the boy and marched over to our pile of bags and towels spread out on the grass . I bundled everything up and got us home . As quick as you can get home with two kids , two bikes , armfuls of stuff and an angry mom . Home hadn 't been that much better earlier , which was why we ended up at the park . The girl and I had been fighting on and off all afternoon as she insisted we go to a further away park and I said no because I was too tired . I yelled . She yelled . We both cried . I am finding it hard to be back home . The euphoria of seeing the kids quickly faded as I was pulled back into the day to day life of a stay - at - home mom . Hours after our plane landed I was starting to wonder if I could keep doing this . If maybe I shouldn 't go back to work after all . It had to be easier then this I found myself thinking . For the first time in a long time I had a taste of freedom . It tasted sweet . Like chocolate cake . Like new love . Like who I used to be . You know , that girl who had so much time on her hands that she didn 't know what to do with it and so she squandered it carelessly . Oh the things I would tell that girl if I could . I am just readjusting I tell myself . In a few days I will have settled back into a familiar pattern and it will be easier . I will remember why I do this . I will forget that sweet taste of freedom . And it will be easier . I saw the decorations on the door as soon as the cab pulled up to the house . Primary coloured paper hearts strung from string taped to the window and paper chain loops . I knew just who had made them . When we opened the door the house was quiet . Then I saw my sister pop out from the kitchen at the end of the hallway . Look who 's here I heard her say . Who asked the girl , as if she was slightly annoyed to be receiving unexpected guests . Mom and dad replied my sister . Oh said the girl and she ran down the hall into my arms where I was kneeling waiting for her . The boy made his way towards me to , but then walked right past to look at the pile of luggage we had dumped in the hall . I hadn 't really missed them . Not at first anyway . I was too busy reveling in being alone , being with friends , being the master of my own time . I had needed that break almost too much to be missing them . It wasn 't until the husband joined joined me in New York that I started to think about them . Knowing they weren 't with him I started to wonder how they were . Only occasionally though . A brief thought until I was easily distracted by food or a pretty building . A email from the mom of a boy whose birthday party the kids were to attend on Saturday brought an end to my relaxed attitude . You have probably already heard , she wrote , that the girl didn 't want to join the pirate ship and so they left . My heart stopped when I read that the girl had been very upset . All of a sudden the fact that I wasn 't there to comfort her and wipe away her tears had me crying . Sometimes I think it is better not to know . I managed to talk myself through it . I walked myself through it as we traipsed across the island of Manhattan making our way down towards the Brooklyn Bridge . But when I woke up the next morning all I could think about was getting back and being with them . The break was over , and if I had to return to the real world I wanted to do it now . Like pulling off a band aid , I wanted the trip home to be over with quickly . There were delays of course , but when we made it home we saw that everything was fine . A long sheet of brown paper taped to the hallway wall recorded all the highlights of the past few days . The kids weren 't traumatised or heartbroken . While they likely missed us , I have a feeling the missing was probably offset by the spoiling they received from my sister and grandma . There are new books and new toys and , I am predicting , new things the girl will inform me that she is now allowed to do . Oh baby baby it 's a wild world plays over the speakers while I sit at a table in a 7th Avenue Starbucks . A big bag of shopping purchased at a Goodwill store a few blocks away sits in a chair across from me . The bag makes me happy . It is filled with fun finds , including my first pair of ridiculously high heeled black pumps that I fell in love with on sight . I had quickly slipped off my Birkenstocks and teetered around the store with a grin on my face . We have been walking the streets after a quiet and lazy morning in the hotel room . My first such morning in a long time . These past few days have been filled with everything but rest , and while I have loved them , I am tired . The last time we were in New York together was almost six years ago . This was before the girl and the boy and us as parents . Back then we spent our time walking the streets and talking and eating . We sat for hours in a Starbucks on the Upper West Side dreaming about all the things we wanted for our future . I am having a great time . I am almost too busy to miss the kids . But of coarse I am missing the kids . Missing the things about them that I love . The things that drive me crazy . Things like this from last September . On the way home from playgroup at the children 's garden this morning we stopped at a friend 's house . They had been away for the joint birthday party and the girl 's friend wanted to give her a gift . It was a thoughtful gift . A gift that reflected the girl 's love of drawing and colouring and crafting . A gift that is now hidden on top of our refrigerator . The gift was a large carrying case full of Crayola crayons , pencil crayons , paint tubes , stamp markers , glittery glue sticks and scissors . The girl wanted to open everything immediately once she received it . She didn 't care that we were standing in the middle of a residential street . She wanted it open and she wanted to draw . I made her wait until we got home . The boy was asleep by the time I pulled the stroller up in front of our house . I unloaded the girl and all our gear before bringing the boy inside . I even got the girl upstairs and left her as she headed to her room with the open bucket of Crayola goods . Much to her dismay I left without opening each of the individual packages . I thought she would be happy with the box of crayons that I knew she could open herself . No . Just as I settled the boy into his crib I heard her yelling like a banshee for me to come and open it up ! I did . I opened up everything . She was so excited and wanted to start drawing on her construction paper right away . I was smart enough to take away the paint and glue since I didn 't want it to get on her bed . I should have just hidden them right then . Unfortunately I did leave her with the scissors . Not that I realized anything was amiss at first . I should have . She was much too quiet . I had the opportunity to clean the kitchen a bit and grab a snack before she started yelling for me to come and get her from her room . Right away I noticed the cut up purple construction paper on her bed . I did not notice that she had cut her hair until we sat together on the couch a few hours later . " Did you cut your hair ? " I asked . " Yes " she said . My guess is that she picked up the scissors in her right hand and then cut a chunk of hair out of the top of her right pigtail . At first I thought that some of her hair must not have been pulled through the elastic all the way and that was why it was sticking up near her head . It looked like a tiny bundle of straw . I decided to leave it there , sticking out of her pigtail . I was partly too nervous to take out the elastic and see exactly how much hair had been cut away . The other part of me wanted the husband to see it . Even though I took a picture , I still wanted him to witness it for himself . It would have been smarter to have removed the hair immediately . By bath time raspberry juice and melted Popsicle made it impossible to remove the cut hair that was now matted down and clumped with the rest of her blond hair . We had to take the scissors to it ourselves in order to cut away the clump . The discovery of the cut hair happened after I had left her on the floor of the sunroom happily playing with her gift . She was fascinated by the five paint tubes . When I looked over at her after a little more kitchen cleaning ( with two kids there is always kitchen cleaning ) she had squeezed multiple colours of paint all up and down her legs . Even her feet were decorated . There was much sighing on my part and protesting on her part that she wouldn 't do it again . I still tided up all the art supplies and put them back in the container . I wiped off as much of the paint as I could . We moved on to other things . Except that later I needed to keep her occupied while I dealt with a dirty diaper . And I was sure that she wouldn 't dare paint her legs again . Not after the talk we had had . True to her word she didn 't . When I came back in the room she had decorated her legs and arms with the coloured , glittery glue . More sighing , more protesting . Everything went back in the container and the container went on top of the fridge . The girl assured me that it wouldn 't happen again . I do believe her . I don 't think she will cut her hair , paint her legs or try to adorn herself with glittery glue for awhile . I 'm not worried about that . I 'm worried about what else she could possibly do . Right now I am probably exhausted and wandering the streets of New York looking for coffee . Wishing I had a pillow . So here is a post I wrote January 6th , 2010 . He screamed . I could hear him through the wall . Despite the husband holding him , rocking him , walking with him nothing would stop the ear shattering yells that sounded as if he was being tortured by a thousand rabid monkeys . I took him to bed with me . I nursed him . Two things that I haven 't been doing anymore at night . But I was desperate . I was sick and I was tired . The husband was worn out and tired too . When he was done , he didn 't fall asleep . Instead , he sat up and looked at me and started screaming . Laying next to him on the bed I frantically tried to think of some way to get him to sleep . I shuffled the pillow over towards him . He sat up and then lay down with half of his body on the pillow . He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened . I lay my down on the pillow next to him . Shocked , I lay with my head on the mattress at the edge of the bed . I listened to his breathing slow until he fell asleep . I moved him off of the pillow and onto the mattress . I reclaimed my pillow . Teething ? Maybe . But I think the screaming maybe be something more . I think it may very well be his new favorite way of communicating . Lucky me . I am leaving for New York early in the morning . It is another world there . I will shower everyday , no one will wipe their hands on me and I will wear nice , clean , new clothes . Yes , I splurged on fancy tops and an actual dress ( gasp ) so I could go forth and walk among other adult . But don 't worry , as soon as I get home I will be back in my uniform . The morning sunlight filters through the window . I listen to the sounds of the husband corralling the kids into their coats and boots downstairs . I enjoy my moment alone . I pick up my black yoga pants from their spot on the floor near the bed . I ignore the yogurt and porridge stains from the day before . I put them on , along with a pair of clean underwear . I pick up yesterday 's t - shirt and throw it in the overflowing laundry basket . I grab a clean t - shirt from the drawer . I pull on the pink hooded sweatshirt I have worn everyday this week . I rifle through the black socks lying on the floor until I find two of mine without stickers stuck to them . I don 't bother checking to see if they match . I glance in the mirror . I contemplate brushing the hair I washed yesterday . Instead I pull it back into a ponytail and pin my bangs back with a bobby pin . I am going away . I am pretty much beyond excited . This trip is coming at the perfect time . In fact , it couldn 't have come soon enough . I am looking forward to being with myself , being with friends , being in New York City . I am eager for BlogHer ' 10 and all the fun it will bring . I want to learn , to meet other bloggers , to party . I am not sure how often I will blog while I am away . Maybe everyday . Maybe twice a day . Maybe not at all . In case I 'm not here and you are missing me I will be re - posting some of my favorite blog posts . You know , just in case you haven 't read them yet . If you are going to be at BlogHer ' 10 too , please say hello . Tap me on the shoulder and introduce yourself . I will probably blush and get embarrassed that you know who I am . But then again , maybe not . I may be the one tapping you on the shoulder . It came about one night while we sat around the dinner table . It had been one of those days . Patience was short . The day had been long . Yet , I was trying . Trying to see the positive , find the silver lining , look on the bright side . he made dinner , changed the boy 's diaper , told the girl a story , let me go hide upstairs . The song is sung often . We change the name of the person the song is about . We change why they are awesome . The boy and girl both love it when we sing about them , but they also love to sing about each other . It doesn 't always make the day better . The hardness is still there . But it makes me smile . And reminds me how awesome my family is . Do you believe in fate ? I asked him as we sat at a table in the bar of a theater in Brixton on our unofficial first date . No , he said , I don 't believe in fate . I believe in chance . I knew he was wrong . Already , I knew he was wrong . Here we were , sitting across from each other on the other side of the world from home . So much in common , so much to start from . Was that chance ? No . Chance . As if our meeting was random . Accidental . We had met on the street . Brought together by a series of planned circumstances and impulsive decisions . Anything different and we may not have met . But we did . There are days , afternoons , moments when I just don 't have any more energy to be polite . The politeness is all gone , spilled out of me in gushes or spurts . Some of the reasons may be obvious , some you probably can 't see . I do try . You just might not see it that way . All I ask is that you cut me some slack . I promise I will do the same for you . |
It has been such a busy week and with my ankle out of commission it has made it even harder , however I cannot thank Joan Faye , Susan Kowitz , Mary Franden and my Dad enough for coming over and picking up the slack or poop or whatever it is that needs to be done . My ankle is getting better , it doesn 't quite look like the balloon it did on Tuesday and is turning all kinds of pretty colors now . It is not broken as I went in to get an x ray against my better judgement , but too many people were concerned that it looked broken I figured I would go and get it xrayed just so they would leave me alone . On Tuesday Susan K came up to the house and we loaded all the pups into the van with Ivie 's assistance , We opened the gate and they followed mom to the van and we just lifted them up and put them into the crates . Ivie stayed behind and Joan met us at the vets office . Susan and Joan transported puppies back and forth and one of them stayed with the vehicle at all times just in case someone walking by had the notion that they could take a puppy , not that I think that would happen but no one wants to take any chances . Dr . Linda checked them all out and they got a good clean bill of health , No hernias , no heart murmurs and good hips and joints . They all got their first set of shots and we micro chipped everyone , that way I have all the numbers to enter into Berner - Garde should someone get lost down the road it is a way for people to find out who they are . Wednesday , Susan , Joan and Mary came over and we had Bath Day . Susan and Joan washed the puppies and Mary and I dried the puppies . We had quite the assembly line going and I am so thankful for every one 's help . Susan and Joan were soaked afterwards but all the puppies did very well . Mary and I took turns , one holding and one using the blow dryer and at first the pups did not like the dryer , but realized that escape was futile and settled in and let us completely dry them . I am not saying they liked it but they all put up with it and no one was allowed to be squirming or crying when the blower was turned off . To say that we had 10 fuzzballs afterwards is an understatement . Boy were they ever cute , I hadn 't realized how dirty they really were and of course immediately after we let them out into the back yard , Orange boy had to go dig in the dirt tunnel that he is working on . Oh well , they are still very clean and cute . Today my good friends Ruth and Randy are coming to evaluate the puppies along with my friend Dani who lives in Portland . Randy will evaluate , Ruth with scribe and Dani is coming to help move the puppies on the deck since I hurt my ankle and cannot really run with pups at this time . It promises to be a long day and I just want everyone to know I most likely won 't be contacting you until Sunday at the earliest . Once Randy has determined which pups are show dogs then I will be contacting the show puppy homes first for them to be making their decisions about puppies . After that is done and I know who is left over for Pet homes then I will be letting them know what the status is , so please be patient and I know the time is getting close and everyone is anxious - including me . This is the only way to describe the puppies . This morning as I was trying to pick up red girl to weigh her , a puppy was under me and as I was trying to avoid stepping on the puppy I ended up falling into a hole and spraining my ankle . To say it hurt is an understatement . Thankfully as I fell I was able to hang on to red and not drop her and not fall on any other puppies . As I sat there crying inwardly and trying to breathe , I had all 10 puppies climbing all over me , giving me kisses and they were just happy I was on their level . I kept my feelings in check as to not upset the pups and eventually managed to get myself up off the ground . I know that the one thing I am supposed to do with a sprain is to elevate and Ice . However , I had to go to work , which is impossible in both instances to do . So now that I am home again this evening writing this I am finally able to elevate and ice and hoping that it is feeling better tomorrow . If not I am not going to work that is for sure . Too many things going on this week to have a bummed up ankle . Yesterday my friend Cindy Geisler came and helped take puppy pictures . We had a wonderful time and it was so nice to spend time with her and not be at a dog show or having her do a chiropractic or acupuncture on one of my dogs . We were able to take her dogs for a nice walk and it was just a lovely afternoon . Today is a big day - The puppies will be temperament tested this evening and my good friend Linda Dalton is coming up to help me with it along with 3 other puppy homes . I normally don 't have puppy people watch the temperament test as it can sometimes surprise people on how the puppy 's act . But two of these gals have been around these tests before and one person has been so great to come and help me when needed and she has some specific things she is looking for in her puppy so I want her to be able to watch as well . I don 't think we will try and take pictures today since I don 't want to tire them out before the test so hopefully I can get those done tomorrow . The puppies are very active they love running and playing in the agility tunnel and the other day I have never laughed so hard . I let Dallas my two year old show dog come and be in the yard with the puppies . He was so excited and happy and would go to one end of the tunnel , crouch down with his butt up in the air and the puppies in the tunnel would bark at him and he would bounce from side to side . Then he would run to the other end of the tunnel and you could hear the puppies running through the tunnel and they would bark at him at the other end and he would bounce and play bow at that end . This went on for quite some time and it was so fun to see them all run and play with him . At one point he and Ivie were rolled over on their backs and each had 4 or 5 puppies on top of their bellies . Of course the ones on Dallas were looking for the milk bar but he didn 't seem to mind at all . They are still nursing on mom , although she is starting to wean them and every once in a while gets after them and lets them know that they have had enough and she is not going to put up with them trying to nurse on her . They are eating 3 times a day - first thing in the morning , which seems to be getting earlier and earlier each day , this morning was around 5 : 30am , 1pm and 8pm and we are up to 8 cups of puppy food soaked in water for the 10 puppies at each meal . Sometimes they polish it all off and other times they leave some for mom to clean up , which she happily obliges . Having my son here has been sooooo nice . He has been enjoying the puppies so much and it is just really nice to hang out with him as an adult without any girlfriends around . The plus side is he finds projects and things to do while he is here and yesterday he and my dad , fixed the steps down to the big dog yard so that the puppies can navigate them and not fall off and hurt themselves . He also did yard patrol , raking grass , and puppy proofed the yard . The end result is happy , happy puppies . Tired but happy . I wasn 't home when they let them out there but have been told they were all playing in the tunnel and climbing in and out of holes and playing king of the mountain . This is all so good for their coordination and muscle development . They tend to play hard for about 30 minutes and then sleep for about 2 hours up in their puppy area on the deck . Last night some of my son 's friends came by after graduation to see the puppies . They were all in the house asleep and thought that getting woken up to be petted and played with was a great thing last night . Abby , Tak and Donovan had the best time and it was another great experience for the pups . The other milestone we had last night is . . . . drumroll please . . . . . . . NO STRAY POOPS ! ! ! All poops were done in the litter box and there were not that many - they made it to going outside ! I don 't know if this was because of the nightly play session or that they are finally getting the picture - but hey I will take it anyway it comes . On another note - birds beware ! Aunt Brandy is now on full guard duty and you had better not be landing in the backyard to mess with any puppies or she will be having bird stew for dinner . I just love watching how the big dogs go into protective duty when puppies are around , these dogs are just the best . The pups are all getting quite big and playful now , they sound as though they are going to tear each other from limb to limb at times . Mom is starting to hold their heads in her mouth to let them know that biting is not acceptable . I remember the very first time I saw her do this , I was amazed at how controlled and gentle she was and yet forceful enough for them to get the picture . It really is amazing to watch how she teaches them things . I am starting to wean them off of ground up food to softened food without puppy formula . We are almost out of formula and when it is gone - too bad , so sad . Their little teeth are needle sharp and so they need to start chewing , but they are so funny , they don 't like change that is for sure . Right now their mixture is 50 / 50 softened food to ground up food and they lap up the ground food and then have this look on their faces , like really , you expect me to eat that , surely you must have more of the good stuff . Although there are always a couple that will go and clean out everyone 's bowl - mostly , lime , teal and Hot Pink . The boys are the first to leave and the girls are the last to stay . Yesterday we had some visitors , first my friend Claudia came by . Claudia is an AKC judge and local Bulldog breeder . She needed some puppy breath and kept giving me a bad time since the pups were so sleepy , she accused me of drugging them before she arrived . Yesterday my niece and nephew came to play with the puppies , I am sorry I wasn 't at the house when they came - that darn work thing again - but according to my dad , who spends most afternoons at the house playing and sitting with the puppies it was a great experience for them . At first they weren 't too sure of these quick little people that came running at them but after a while they realized that this was fun and all had a good time . Ivie did great as I was pretty sure she would be but after our last experience with children and her babies you never know . One thing I do know is they were tired last night and slept great . So great that I was able to sleep for 10 hours - what is that ! I think my body must have needed it as I haven 't slept that long in a very long time . Today is going to be a busy day for them as well . I know of at least three sets of visitors that are coming to the house to see puppies today . Kim will help me take their 5 week old pictures and they will get wormed again today . So I will try and post more tonight , but right now I have to finish up cleaning the puppy room before folks start arriving . Oh my goodness , in the last few days these guys are getting more and more active and the last two days have had some pretty big milestones . The puppies are really starting to love people interaction . Their little tails are wagging when I pet them and my chin is either really clean or full of leftover puppy food because each and every one of them have been giving me lots of kisses Yesterday , Dallas had a bath and I used the blow dryer for the three plus hours it takes to completely dry him , next to the puppies . They were a bit nervous at first but after three hours they could care less . Yesterday afternoon dad took off one side of their whelping box as they are getting too active for Ivie to come and go . This opens them up to freedom at night , yet gives them the security of where they have been sleeping . I put down rubber matting on the floor and added a litter box for them to start the learning process of being potty trained . I have had great success with past litters and already a couple of them are starting to use the litter box . Of course I have shavings from one end of the room to the other , but that is not my concern right now - that is what my Dyson is for . Today they were also moved to the Weana Feeder method of feeding . Rather than having circular bowls the weana feeder has individual feeding stations so they learn to eat a bit slower and the piggly wigglies don 't get all the food . I took a picture today and will post it tomorrow after they are downloaded . We had our first future home come to visit today . Joan lives here in Sequim and has been dying to come and visit and help out where possible , so today I put her to work , holding puppies while I clipped toenails . I think she had fun and Ivie was on her best behavior once again and has yet another fan . Last week I had a scare in that Orange boy all of the sudden just wasn 't doing well . He didn 't want to eat and was lethargic so off to the vets office we went . He had a temp and she checked him for Parvo which was negative , thank god . And determined that he just had an upset tummy . She gave him some IV 's to get him hydrated again and a short of antibiotics to kick start his system . We isolated him from the other puppies for 24 hours just to make sure that if he did have something we didn 't spread it all the way through them . I am happy to say that 24 hours later he was full of piss and vinegar and feeling his oats . Dad joked that she gave him a pick me up shot . Thankfully no one else was showing any signs and they seem to be thriving with all the fresh air . Little Lime girl is still the smallest and this morning she weighed in at 4 lbs 2 ounces . On the flip side , Black & Purple Boys both weighed in at 6 lbs 12 ounces this morning . We have our routine , I wake up and take them all outside in the grass , so hopefully they poop and pee in the grass and not the deck , I usually put Ivie out with them and then come in the house and make their puppy gruel and place it out in the grass for them to chow down . While they are eating I feed the big dogs then Ivie comes back out and cleans out their bowls and starts cleaning them . It has been a bit cool in the wee early morning hours . So in this time I go and put fresh bedding down in their box and take the rest out to be washed - I call this the great Poop Fest . Then I clean each puppy with a damp soapy washcloth and bring them back inside until they have pretty much dried . Then I weigh them and bring them back outside where the poop fest continues . During the day they pretty much sleep , play with each other and poop . We do a midday lunch around 2pm and then an evening meal around 8pm . After the evening meal they all get cleaned up again and brought in the house for the night . They have been doing pretty good about sleeping through the night - which has been wonderful for me . This week , I have had to go back to work at least part of the day and my dad is enjoying taking over puppy sitting . Today was such a beautiful day that we decided they should be outside for at least part of the day . We set up the x pens in the grass and brought them out . It was so fun to watch them sniffing and checking things out . Dallas so enjoyed seeing the puppies outside today , he could hardly contain himself . He wants to play with them so bad . He is such a wonderful puppy sitter . Last night I think Ivie tweaked something trying to get in the whelping box and has not been feeling too well today . I have been giving her pain medication and trying to message her , but I haven 't been able to place where the pain is coming from . I think she was very happy to have the puppies outside today so she had some room to maneuver . I had originally thought we would make a step for the whelping box and leave it up but under the circumstances I think we will try and take it down in the next few days in order to give her more room . The puppies are starting to get the hang of lapping up their food instead of sucking on it . There are moments of brilliance and then the next round they act as though this is a brand new thing and they don 't know what to do . Up until a few minutes ago everyone but Lime girl was getting the hang of it and finally she did too . Lime is still the smallest and I try and give her every advantage I can . Whether that is bringing her out of the whelping box and just letting her nurse on Ivie all alone in the living room or putting her on the best teat when everyone is fighting for their spot . She is doing well , but is quite small compared to the others and she just may be that way , in any case she is so sweet and very easy going and is going to make a very sweet pet for someone . I have been getting asked about when people can start coming to visit the puppies . I had originally said at four weeks but that is next weekend and this is a bad weekend for me . Our local kennel club is putting on an agility trial and I have to make an appearance or two during the weekend so it is best if I am not trying to manage too many things at one time . I think the following weekend would be ideal , the puppies will be 5 weeks of age and their little personalities will really be starting to develop at that time . If you would like to visit please let me know in advance and if I have lots of requests I may have to limit the number of people on any given day and the amount of time you are here . I ask that you don 't bring other dogs to my house as I need to keep my property as contaminate free as I can for the puppies sake . Please wear shoes that you don 't mind me spraying with a bleach water mixture and if you have old pants that is good as well . In the past I have seen where the bleach water has gotten on pants - including my own but it is all for the safety of the puppies . You will also have to spray your hands . Send me an email and I will give you directions to my house and if that weekend doesn 't work for you then we still have a couple more before the puppies will be going home . I did have situation last weekend that was not too good in that some friends with a 3 year old child came to see the puppies . He was a very , very active child , running full steam ahead and tried and tried to climb in the whelping box to get to the puppies . Ivie was beside herself with worry and she just knew that if he succeeded he would hurt one of her puppies and she came very close to biting the child . Ivie has NEVER , EVER tried to bite anyone but it was in her right to protect her babies and that is what she was trying to do . Because of this incident I am not sure how Ivie is going to react around children the next time they come to the house . I will test the waters next week with my niece and nephew that she knows and they know to be calm around the puppies . I need to have children be here so that the puppies can get used to them but I also need them to be well mannered and not screaming or chasing after the puppies . It was a very stressful situation last weekend and I have been putting off writing about it because I never want to offend or hurt anyone 's feelings , however I have to protect Ivie and not put her in that situation ever again . Thanks for understanding and by the way I love comments if anyone ever wants to post one , that way I at least know someone is reading this . Ever have one of those days that at the end of the day you wondered what the hell happened and you wish you could start it all over again , well that was yesterday . Backing up to Wed I had opened a new bag of formula and although it looked different , I didn 't think anything about it . Wed night purple boy and lime girl had some loose stools . When I woke up yesterday morning - whewy I had ten puppies with some pretty stinky diarrhea . Nasty , stinky and very smelly . My morning consisted of cleaning puppies , cleaning a whelping box and cleaning more puppies . I called Anne and asked her what she thought about what was happening and she agreed with me that it was most likely the formula but to be on the safe side , I should take stool samples into the vets office , get them all wormed and start them on puppy gruel earlier than anticipated . As I was preparing to do this , my holistic vet called and was originally scheduled to come to the house at 6 pm to give Brandy and Dallas a chiropractic adjustment and she wanted to know if she could come at 1 : 30 . It was now 11 : 30 so I was going to have to wait to go to the vets office until after Dr . Finn had left the house . I was also supposed to go to work for a few hours , ha ! That wasn 't happening , so I called my office and explained that I wasn 't coming in . Dr Finn came and didn 't finish until after 4pm - ugh , I still needed to get to the vets office before they closed . This is when Christine told me that she had locked her keys in her truck , which was parked immediately behind both of my vehicles . She needed to be at another appointment at 5pm . My dad was here and I had to borrow his car to take her to her next appointment while AAA came to the house to unlock her truck . Then off to the vets office before they closed in order to get stool samples analysed . Good news I was able to accomplish all of this and find out there was nothing to worry about and I was pretty confident at that point that the formula was a bad batch . Next I had to pick up a different brand of formula to make the puppy gruel and back home . Still had stinky puppies but they were STARVING and pretty sure at that point that someone had slit their little throats for lack of food . I hadn 't been able to give them anything all day . I made the gruel and thankfully it was nice enough that I could take them out on the back deck to feed them . They are really not ready to eat puppy gruel and I think I managed to get some down them in order to keep them from crying in hunger . At 8pm I sat down at my computer for the first time of the day and realized that I hadn 't eaten all day . I don 't think I have ever been so happy to have a day be over with . Starting today - it was a much better day . The weather was not as nice today so I had to feed the puppies in the kitchen . I have these wonderful rubber mats that I put down and decided today that I would do one puppy at a time , dipping my finger in the gruel and letting them suck on it bringing it to the gruel . It has been a slow process , 10 puppies every couple of hours but I am happy to say that at the end of the day , I have 8 of the 10 puppies that are starting to lap up the gruel and diving in with gusto . Hopefully tomorrow little lime and orange boy will be doing so as well . The puppies are starting to get more and more active and it is fun to watch them start to chew on each other . Last night little teal girl had the heating pad in her mouth and was tugging and pulling on it with all her might . Made me laugh after a really crappy day . Tonight I am sure I will be able to sleep much better not worrying about upset little tummies . I am noticing that they are starting to paw at each other and mouth each other a little bit . Purple Boy and Red girl are doing it the most and it is really fun to see them starting to interact with each other . Of course they all interact whenever it is chow time . and right now they are really only eating , sleeping and pooping . The poop always comes immediately after I change the bedding . This morning I thought I would wait an hour after they had eaten so that they could get that all done . Nope , they had to wait until fresh clean bedding was down to do their business . Funny how that works . I am still supplementing them , usually first thing in the morning , midday and the last thing at night so about every 8 hours . It is a two hour process to feed them and I have had so many people offer to come and help and I would really love the help . However , these puppies are the most difficult pups I have ever had the pleasure of bottle feeding . I have taken to wearing a leather glove - otherwise they would claw my hand to shreds and their toenails are trimmed to the best of my ability without taking them down to the quik . Black boy takes forever and I get a real upper body workout with him he fights and pushes for a good 30 minutes on each feeding . Orange boy needs to be fed twice as he only eats so much in each feeding . Lime girl spills half of it out her mouth . Gold attacks the bottle like it is her last meal and Hot Pink well she can suck down 6 ounces in nothing flat , so you have to stop her before she gets too much and make sure she burps . Good news is that starting on Friday I will work them over to puppy gruel and the bottle feeding will go away . Sorry , Sorry , Sorry ! I have been wanting to post for the past week but remember me telling you about upgrading Internet . I did but it didn 't work . Monday the CenturyLink guy came to the house and proceeded to tell me that what they sold me over the phone wouldn 't work , but he could give me better internet , I would just have to get a new router . hmmm . Many phone calls to local business ' later , I found the one and only router at Wal Mart for $ 499 . 00 ! I just about choked and went online and got it at Best Buy , but it didn 't arrive until today . So between Monday and today I have been trying to work off my cell phone . To say I am relieved to finally have service back is an understatement and the fact that it is about 1000 x faster than what I had . So much has happened this week , on Tuesday Addy and Dave went home . It was so nice having them stay with me and help with the puppies . We had a scare Monday night when in the middle of the night Ivie managed to step on little Lime Girl . Dave woke me scared to death that she was seriously hurt and he was crying , he felt so bad that it had happened on his watch . The good thing is at this age they are pretty flexible and although she screamed for a while she seemed fine within an hour . I did take her into my vet the next day just to be sure and Linda said she was just fine so that put us all at ease . Black boy was the first one to start opening his eyes . Now they all have little slits , They still cannot see and it is funny to watch them walk into each other or the side of the whelping box . They are all up on all feet and walking really well . Poor Ivie has to make a loop around the box and she still cannot lay down without assistance since they are so active . For the longest time Teal and Lime were they only two that hadn 't reached 2 lbs . Teal reached that mark on Wed and Lime hit the 2 lb mark today . Black hit the 3 pound mark on Wednesday and by the afternoon Hot Pink Girl was also at 3 lbs and working hard on catching up with him . She succeeding in doing so this morning . She has been renamed in this house as Piggly Wiggly . That girl can eat ! Ivie is still being a good mom and trying very hard to feed all of her babies , but it has come to my conclusion that she just doesn 't have enough milk for all of them . One of her teats doesn 't produce any milk so there are 9 good teats for 10 puppies . Last night Addy and I began supplementing again and I think everyone will be happier . I am going to try and do it just 3 times a day , once at night , once in the morning and once midday . Their sense of smell is amazing and this morning as I was starting with the two smallest , teal and lime girls as I would put them back into the whelping box the puppies that were around them started waking up and tried to suckle on them for the milk they had just had . The picture above is of Chas , Chas is my stepbrother and he adores puppies . Chas has begged my dad to bring him to the house every day so he can see the puppies . We told him on the first day that he had to wait until they were a week old before he could hold one . So yesterday he held me to that promise . Gold girl is his favorite and he calls her Goldie , I just loved this picture of her giving him kisses . Oh My Gosh - where has the time gone - I cannot believe these babies are already a week old . Momma Ivie is doing well and all the pups are getting enough nutrition from her that I am not supplementing . Addy was doing it in the middle of the night but I asked her to stop since it was giving Ivie the idea that she didn 't have to take care of her babies since we would do it for her and that is not what I wanted from her . I know she can do it and it is showing as all of the puppies are thriving and have fat little bellies . Addy and I trimmed toenails yesterday - 120 toenails if you think about it - 10 puppies x 12 toenails per puppy that is a lot of toenails and boy do they squirm so you have to try and wait for them to stop squirming so you don 't take them down too far . I think Ivie was much happier that we did that , some of them were getting quite long and sharp . It is fun to see the black pigment start to come in on their little pink noses and little goldie is going to have a black spot right in the middle of her blaze , I cannot wait to see how that is going to turn out . Little Teal Girl is the first one to a teat and the last one to leave so she is gaining nicely and Hot Pink Girl is the biggest pig of the bunch . She just muscles her way in and knocks off whoever is in her way , I predict she is going to be the alpha of the litter and the busiest of them all . It will be interesting to see if I am right . Every once in a while you hear one of the pups bark or growl , it is the funniest thing to hear . You can see them dreaming and their little legs just running for all they are worth . They are also getting a very good sense of smell and someone always has to be with Ivie when they are sleeping and she decides to come into the whelping box . It is mayhem all squirming and scooting towards her as fast as they can scoot . Pretty soon I think a couple of them are going to be walking - they are so strong already it amazes me . There hasn 't been much to write about so I didn 't yesterday - sorry if I disappointed anyone . Mom 's milk is here and the puppies are reaping the benefits . All have surpassed their original birth weight and I wouldn 't be surprised if we don 't have our first 2 pound puppy by tomorrow morning - anyone care to guess who that will be ? I will give you a hint - one of the boys . My good friend and Collie breeder Mary came by yesterday to see the puppies . She thought they all looked wonderful . She is very happy for me that I have seven girls to choose from , especially since this is Ivie 's last litter . She likes Silver and Red the best based on what you can at this age . We noticed that little gold girl is starting to get some black pigment in her white blaze , either that or someone has gotten her nose dirty somehow . I got your attention with that headline didn 't I ? So yesterday afternoon Addy and her husband Dave showed up and what a blessing they are , such great people and for Addy to selfishly offer to come and stay with me so I can get some sleep - well those friends just are pretty amazing in my book . Especially when one has been sleep deprived for a day and a 1 / 2 . When they arrived Addy asked if Ivie 's milk had started to come in yet , which it hadn 't and I told her so . She then proceeded to ask me if I had a cow 's nose ? huh , did I hear that right . I know at this point I am rather sleep deprived but I couldn 't have heard her correctly . So she pointed to her nose and said a cow 's nose , do you have a cow 's nose ? Why on earth would I have a cow 's nose is beyond my scope of things , and I told her no I did not . That is when she told me that in China they make a Soup with a Cow 's nose in it and it helps with milk production . Ok , now I have learned something entirely new . If I couldn 't get a cow 's nose , then a pigs nose was the next best thing and pigs feet were good as well . It is now eight pm on a Sunday night in Port Angeles and finding these things are not going to happen , but I can make some phone calls in the morning and see what I can round up . We had some dinner and Dave worked on my internet which I have been saying for years is slower than slow . He tells me that the technology that my internet is coming in on is outdated and they stopped using it 10 years ago . . . . hmmm that is about the time I bought the house and had it installed . . . Great . . . . One more thing to talk to Century Link about , however since they have a monopoly and I have no other option up here I don 't know how that is going to change . . . but I digress again . Addy then sends Dave off to the store to purchase supplies to help Ivie . As they are talking in Chinese I have no idea what they have planned but have my faith in them . Addy and I decided at that point after weighing the puppies that they really needed some supplements and so we bottle fed them after they had nursed on Ivie for a while . I felt better going to bed knowing they all had full little bellies and had faith that Ivie 's milk would start coming in soon . So off to bed I went . . . . oh the much needed sleep that I was talking about . Anyone that says sleep is over rated has never had puppies and been deprived and this is only day one - you should have seen me the first time around . When I woke this morning , Ivie and babies all looked very happy and her milk was starting to come in , whether this is on her own or Addy 's doing , I don 't know , but I will give her the benefit of the doubt . This morning I woke up much refreshed and sent Addy off to bed . Puppies all look great . Ivie was happy to see me and this morning when I weighed everyone their weights were starting to climb back up . Ivie 's milk is now coming in and I think the danger part is over . I then made those phone calls for Addy , looking for pigs feet , cow 's nose or a pig snout . I can just see the eye 's rolling on the other side of the phone call and I will be the subject of many dinner conversations tonight . What we do for our dogs - right ! At noon we had an appointment with my vet to get dew claws removed and have her check on everyone . Dew claw removal is one of those things I hate but I hate dew claws even more so I do remove them . Quite a few of the puppies had double dew claws so I am glad we did remove them all . In the middle of the removal the vets office had an emergency so we had to stop and wait . This made for a long afternoon . On the way home we stopped at the butcher and picked up our treasure 's and Addy is going to make some god aweful concoction tonight after her nap that I am sure the dogs will love . Me not so much and I plan on making sure the kitchen window is open so the smells don 't permeate the house . Not much to post today other than the fact the Ivie and I are very tired . She has been sleeping most of the day and the puppies nursing on her off and on . Her milk still hasn 't come in all the way but the puppies are maintaining their birth weight so that is good . That is all except little teal girl . I have been putting her on the best teat in the house for the past 24 hours and if she doesn 't start gaining by this evening I will probably start supplementing her with some goat milk formula . I hate to do this if I don 't have to so here is hoping that she starts to gain . Help in the form of sleep is on it 's way - Addy Cui is a friend of mine that recently moved to Washington from Hong Kong . Addy is fellow Bernese lover and has offered to come and do the night shift for a while . This works well since she works remotely for a company in China and is awake from 10pm to 4am every day and is happy to sit and work next to the whelping box and make sure all is well . This will allow me to get some much needed sleep for this fog induced stupor that I find myself in at the moment . This morning the puppies had their first official visitor and that is Chas . Chas is my Step brother and ADORES puppies . He will be pestering my dad for the next 8 weeks to come and see the puppies and is the best at sitting with them . They always seem to know that he is a gentle soul and gravitate to him . He so desperately wanted to hold one of the puppies today but I told him they are still too little and they tend to squirm and he would feel bad if he dropped one . He did get to pet each one and wanted to know which one was Lucy . During our first litter - Chas thought that little Yellow Girl should be called Lucy and it stuck with us . I told him we didn 't have a Yellow girl in this litter and he was going to have to come up with another name for one of the puppies - should be interesting to see what he comes up with , I will keep you posted . The puppies are all doing very well . All have gained a little bit of weight except for the two little ones Teal and Lime girl but they have only lost a small amount so I am still not worried . I haven 't started supplementing but m prepared to if need be , I want to give Ivie time to bring in her milk and if she can do it naturally that is the best for the puppies . Ruth stayed with me last night and she let me take a good 4 hour nap this morning . Afterwards we weighed and took pictures of all the puppies . For the life of me , I cannot figure out how I managed to lose the pictures of Orange Boy , Gold Girl and Black Boy but I did and when someone comes over I will enlist their help in getting those and posted on the blog for you . In the meantime I didn 't want to lose the order in which they should be so I have left the pictures of pups in that order from the first litter . So this afternoon my girlfriend from Roy showed up and as we were sitting in the living room catching up on things , Ruth noticed that Ivie had a discharge . I took her back to the whelping room and she didn 't want to leave her box . We both decided that the time was near - give or take a few hours . So I called Dr . Wagner and told her what was going on and she and I both agreed that if we were going to do a c - section , doing one at 5pm rather than 2am was a good thing . She called in her troops for the vet clinic and I called in mine - all meeting at the clinic about the same time . Three hours later , lots of bloody towels and working hard to revive puppies we have 10 beautiful babies . 7 girls and 3 boys . All are healthy and strong with beautiful markings . The biggest is a boy at 1 . 5 pounds and the smallest is a girl at 1 . 04 most are between 1 . 24 and 1 . 36 so it is a very consistant litter . I am not concerned about any of them thriving which is much better than the last two litters of many sleepless nights and crying and praying to god that they all survive . These puppies are good and strong and have healthy lungs . Ivie had a hard time with this c section . Her blood pressure dropped and they had to put in an extra tube to get fluids into her and it took her a long time to recover . She is now at home with her babies and seems to be doing much better . She hadn 't eaten all day and they have a big tube down their throat for the anesthesia so I like to start her off with some vanilla ice cream . That was a huge hit she perked right up after spoon feeding her some . Then I had some chicken that I was saving for her and she just about ate my hand trying to get it . . . poor girl is starving . She polished it all down with some raw food and some pain pills wrapped up in turkey . I have the night shift and Ruth has gone to bed and will relieve me in the morning . Then we will take some pictures of everyone and I will post them so you can see them . All in all I am very pleased with these pups . And I am beginning to think a watched mom is much the same . Although this morning Ivie really didn 't want to eat her food . She ate some then spit it out - much to Dallas and Brandy 's liking . She is resting , her temperature has not dropped which they say in necessary in order for her to start delivering puppies . However Ivie has never read the breeders handbook and does things her own way . With her first two litters I never saw her temperature drop , so why should it this time . In either case , my very good friend Ruth Johnson is on her way to spend the night with me tonight . Which will be so nice in case puppies decide to come in the middle of the night . If not we have a c section planned for Tomorrow at 1pm and I have all my peeps lined up to help . Linda Dalton - also coming in from out of town and is the BEST at organizing people . I have my friend Mary Franden , who is a collie breeder , Susan Kowitz who has a puppy from my first litter and is the queen of taking pictures and documenting everything . Anita Pedersen who is a retired er nurse and will do whatever anyone tells her to do , Courtney who is my dog sitter and a vet tech . Ashley Angevine who is the vet tech on call and the best at reviving puppies that don 't want to be revived , I know we have Kizmet today because of Ashley 's determination and willingness to not give up and of course Dr . Wagner who has given me her cell phone and told me I can call her in the middle of the night - here is hoping we don 't have a middle of the night thing and more of a afternoon delivery . My team is in place ! I have been nesting for two days , there is enough food at my house to feed a small army , I have cleaned , cleaned and cleaned some more which is probably a very good thing . I managed to get 1 / 2 of the lawn mowed again last night and I think I will do the dog yards again once Ruth is here . That way if I cannot get them mowed for another three weeks it won 't look like I am growing hay in my back yard . At least it is cooler today which is nice for Ivie . I will keep you all posted . . . . The countdown begins . When Ivie had her big litter two years ago she decided to deliver her puppies two days early , while I was in the shower . So this time I decided I would be prepared . I brought home all files I needed from the office last night and advised my clients that I would be working from home for the next couple of weeks since my dog was going to be having puppies . I have to say I think most of my clients were understanding and excited , but there are a few that I don 't think understand the concept . Why would you stay home with puppies , don 't you just let the mother care for them . . . . Yah right . So then I have to explain to them that what should happen when a person makes the decision to breed their dog . Puppies are fragile , they can get squished unknowingly by their mother and especially when there is a big litter , it sometimes is just impossible for her to lay down without laying on a puppy . Then you hear the muffled ummph cry of a puppy that cannot breath , and you have to roll your hand under mom and pull them out . Also with a big litter , mom usually doesn 't have enough milk , and you have to watch and rotate the puppies on to the good teats and sometimes supplement with goats milk in order for everyone to get enough to eat . A good breeder will also socialize and work with the puppies as they grow in order for them to be able and willing to adapt to their new environment . After talking with them for a while , they are amazed as they had no idea that so much went into raising a litter . So many people have never gotten a dog from a breeder but rather gotten them from a pet store or humane society or a friend who 's dog just happened to have a litter of puppies . I must admit I have been one of those people in the past and recognize that person . . . . but I have gotten off the subject of coming to work from home in order to be prepared . Last night I laid out all the supplies needed , changed the light bulbs in the whelping room since the only way to do so is to put a ladder in the whelping box and I didn 't think that would be too good of an idea with puppies in the box . I had bought a couple of bulbs that are supposed to last 20 years and decided this was a good place to put them . I wondered as I was trying to get them out of the packaging If I break them getting them out of the package will they still be replaced by the manufacturer ? I doubt it - it practically takes a rocket scientist to figure out how to get these dang things out of the packaging , but I managed and installed them without breaking them , Yeah ! We are ready and prepared ! This morning Ivie woke me up in her normal manner of whimpering and letting me know she was hungry , this is a good sign that maybe today is not yet the day and I can actually take a shower , which I did for inquiring minds . She ate her breakfast , went out in the yard and did her business and proceeded to whine and wimper for the next hour . I think it was because I was home and she was hoping for some sympathy , which of course she did get . Took her temperature and it has not dropped , although this has never been an indication of puppies coming with her and proceeded to double check the whelping room . Towels , check . Scissors - check , paper towels - check , garbage can - check , dental floss - check , iodine - check and the list goes on . I am ready - I think and as I sit here typing she is relaxing by the front door , probably hoping I will let her out so she can go dig a hole big enough for a small car to get lost in - but that is not happening sweetheart at least not today . Anyway , I am prepared - I think ! Everyone keeps asking how Ivie is doing . She looks beautiful , has a pregnant glow , her coat is shiny and lush and her milk is coming in . She is hungry and I am giving her three meals a day instead of two as she cannot eat a big meal any more . I am coming home at lunch now to feed her and check in on her and take her for a waddle down the road . I say Waddle because that is what it resembles . Oh my goodness , it is hard to believe we have one week to go before babies are born . I am so excited and can hardly wait to see what Ivie has . She looks like a small house on four legs or others have mentioned she deeply resembles a beached whale . The reproduction vet indicated that because Ivie has had two c sections she will most likely need to have another one . I had originally scheduled x rays for Monday , however a very wise old time breeder told me that if we were doing a c section there was no reason to do x rays . We will get all the puppies and that is the main reason to do x rays . No reason to expose the puppies to radiation if it wasn 't necessary , which it wont be . My other issue was that my regular vet is leaving town at 5am on Friday morning and won 't be home until late Sunday night . ACK ! ! ! I was panicking . My vet suggested that we drive to the repro vet in Tacoma but that is two and a half hours away and the last thing I want to do it drive home after a c section with Ivie and a bunch of puppies , what if she goes into labor on the way there , what do I do then . So I made inquiry 's and made phone calls and decided our back up vet will be our old vet , Dr . Wagner . She did Ivie 's first C section and did a great job , she allowed me to watch and be available to help if need be . We had left the clinic because Dr . Wagner had a baby and was on maternity leave when Frodo had gotten sick and no one was able to help me at that time . Dr . Wagner was more than happy to be available to help and gave me her cell phone in case I need her in the middle of the night . The plan is to let Ivie start the delivery process on her own , this will help with her hormones and milk production and then we will go into the vets office when she shows any signs of not being able to deliver on her own . Today has been shopping day ! Or at least getting dog and cat food day since I will have to work the first part of next week and the store where I get my pet food is the opposite direction from work . $ 600 dollars later , my dogs and cat will be able to eat for the next two months . It is amazing how fast it all adds up . Then off to Costco - lets just say my check book is looking rather empty right now . I still have a few other things I have to pick up but the weather was threatening to rain and if I didn 't get my lawn mowed today , It may not happen for another month and that would not be a good thing . So I am happy to say all the dog yards are picked up and mowed . I still need to weed eat but I couldn 't get my weed eater started today , instead Dallas and I went for a nice long walk . I will try and keep everyone up to date on things as they happen on this blog . I find it is the easiest way to stay in contact with my puppy homes . Feel free to leave comments or questions and I will answer them as I have time . However in order to do that I must leave Ivie and the rest of the crew at home . I gave Ivie a bath yesterday to get her cleaned up and toenails trimmed before she has her babies . She is looking somewhat liked a beached whale at this point and she has 3 weeks left to go , she is going to be Ginormous when the time comes . I also just found out my regular vet is going to be out of town when Ivie 's pups are due . This is terrible news and I am afraid I am going to have to take her over to Tacoma to Dr . Smith 's office for a C section . The thought of driving home with Ivie and babies is not a pleasant one , but I just don 't trust the other vets in my area to do the job . Breeding dogs isn 't as easy as throwing two dogs in the back yard and hoping they will get the job done , no it is much more complicated than that . Or at least breeders and Vets seemed to make it more complicated than that . There is a magic hormone called Progesterone and basically when your girl comes into season you monitor her progesterone - at about $ 100 bucks a pop by going into the vets office , they take blood from her and send it off to a lab . At least here in Sequim they send it off to a lab as my vet doesn 't have the equipment to test it in house . I usually get the results back the following morning . So based on my last experience with Driving to Utah to breed to Beowulf and having Ivie get bit by a brown recluse spider and losing all but one puppy I decided that my pocket book really needed a break this time around . Although I would have loved to breed to Beowulf , it just wasn 't going to be feasible . He was going to be spending the Winter in Arizona with his family and although the idea of spending some time in warm weather was appealing I decided that I would breed to a Beowulf Son , Chandler . Chandler lives in Federal Way and I really enjoy spending time with his Mom and Dad , Marty and Jon Moore . Chandler just turned two and it was decided that Ivie would be his first girlfriend since she was a proven bitch and had produced nice puppies in the past . On Tuesday Ivie 's progesterone was at . 2 , remember she needs to get to 5 . So I wasn 't too worried . we decided to wait until Friday and do another draw . My vet does the draw and the next morning I decide to go to the dump and do some stuff at the office . Meanwhile in the morning Ivie is acting all antsy and I couldn 't figure out what was wrong with her , so I put her outside and then figured it was safer to bring her back in the house while I was out doing my errands . Around 11 : 30 I noticed an email from my vet letting me know that her progesterone had risen to 1 . 9 . . . hmmm this could be a bad thing , so I called Anne ( my mentor and very good friend ) Anne says you need to get progesterone done today . Call Dr . Smith and see if they can get you in . So I call and they tell me that I have to be there by 2pm for them to get the results back the same day . . . . It is now 11 : 37 and I am 2 1 / 2 hours from her office and I don 't even have my dog with me . . . . ok then , we will be there . I race home , change my clothes , grab my toothbrush , an extra change of clothes and a small bag of dog food that I happened to have for this very reason and flew out the door . Thankfully the bridge wasn 't open for any submarines and I made it to their office at 2 : 01pm . . . whew ! Linda meets me and while we are waiting for results we go and have lunch , great for taking my mind off of things . Linda is now getting worried about the time , so we head back over to their office and I ask if they have the results back from her test . This is the actual conversation . The young girl says let me look , It says here that Ivie 's progesterone is at 6 . 3 . My response - SHIT ! 6 . 3 are you sure ! her response , as she looks horrified by my language at this point is - would you like to talk to the doctor ? My response , no need , I know what I need to do - Thanks ! And Out the Door I go ( I think that is a line in a song ) I call Linda , she lives close and asks if I need anything to get on the road . I think I am good . I call Anne , She says I need to call Jon , so I call Jon . Jon has left the dog show to visit his parents in Quartzide about 2 hours away . He says he will pack up and start driving north , which means going back to the show site , load up his trailer and stuff and drive right by where he currently is . . . Did I say how much I like Jon . Anyway I start driving south . Ivie and I spent the night in Oregon and we met Jon the next day just north of Sacramento . We find an area and let the dogs be together but Chandler just couldn 't get the job done . Being young and all he just didn 't quite know what to do . We tried and tried and I realize at this point that we need help . All our help is in Oregon , so we start driving North . I meanwhile am following Jon and making phone calls . Jon is exhausted and we pulled into Weed , California at a Pilot Truck Stop and park his trailer . By now I have been coached by the best of the best in breeders on how to help Chandler and I have to say , he got the job done ! Good Boy Chandler ! The following morning we drove to his place and got another tie , I then came on home and worked the next day , to leave work and go over to Federal Way the next day for another tie . By this time I have put some major miles on my van . For someone that was hoping for something close to home and simple , well that just went out the door . Yesterday , I received confirmation from Dr . Smith 's office that Ivie is pregnant and she expects her to have 7 to 9 puppies on or around May 3rd . This is such good news and I am so happy . Now comes the waiting . Thankfully I am going to the National Specialty next week , I am sure when I get home , I will see a big change in my baby girl . |
I started with cleaning dishes from the night before . Since I was a Waterbender , it was a little bit easier to do . I just pushed and pulled the water that was in the sink and began swirling it around the dishes . In no time at all , I was done with that chore . It also helped that there were only twenty people - including Sokka and I , my brother - in the tribe . Next , I went to clean up inside some of the tents around camp . It was never too hard , since all I had to do was make the beds . There were no dirty clothes lying on the floor , except for Sokka 's . I never understood why he couldn 't just put his clothes in the barrel by the outer wall like everyone else did . " Katara , Sokka wants to go on a fishing trip with you , " she informed me . I rolled my eyes . He was so annoying to be around . " He says he wants to teach you how to catch fish , just in case something happens . " I smiled at her and walked away to the edge of the water . I sighed at remembering my grandmother 's comment about " having fun with my brother " . All he would do is talk about himself , or complain about me and something that I did . My thoughts were interrupted when my brother came by in his canoe , ready to go fishing . I rolled my eyes and reluctantly walked into the canoe . Sokka brought out the paddles and began stroking in the water . I rolled my eyes , seeing his weak strokes were getting us nowhere . To help save some time , I decided to make a little wave to help us move along . When my brother saw us moving , he sat up straight and looked back at me , smiling . " Did you see that ? I got us away from the shore in less than two minutes . " he bragged . I crossed my arms and smirked . He always thought he did things himself , when in reality I helped him . He also claims to the younger kids in our tribe that he 's the strongest one of us all , but I know that 's not true . Before my dad left , Sokka tried going with him . But when he picked up his bag , he stumbled over to Dad . My dad easily took the bag from him and handed it to one of the other men of our Tribe . Sokka obviously saw my tears , because when he turned back to watch where he was going , he began talking again , but not sympathetically . " You don 't have to cry , Katara . I 've always been better than you at things , and you know it . " I glared at him angrily , but he didn 't notice . To get his attention , I made a small wave splash him . " Hey ! " he shouted . " What was that for ? " " To show that you might be the better non - bending fighter , but I 'll always be the best Waterbending fighter . " I replied mockingly . " Oh , yeah ? Then where is your army of warriors ? I don 't see any of them coming up to you for training . " Sokka teased . " Sokka , you know perfectly well that I 'm the only Waterbender in the whole South Pole ! Our mother died to protect me ! " I yelled , tears dripping down my chin as I thought of my mother . " Katara , I 'm sorry . I didn 't mean for you to become angry or upset . " he said , his voice sympathetic . " I know that Mom died to protect you , and I know that you and Gran Gran do all you can to uphold her responsibilities . " I looked up at him and smiled . " You really mean that ? " " Of course . Now , wipe those tears away . I think I saw an arctic seal on some land over there . Maybe we can have a big meal for once tonight . " Sokka commented , paddling over to the large snow - covered iceberg . When we got to the shore , I jumped off the canoe onto the snow . I saw the seal out of the corner of my eye , but I kept my mouth shut , to see if my brother could track it down and catch it for dinner . " Stay back here , Katara , and whatever you do , don 't use magic ! " he whispered , pushing me behind a hill before dashing off across the snow . I rolled my eyes at the word " magic " . My brother didn 't understand that the bending arts were not magic . Since I had nothing else to do , I began playing with the snow around me . I was desperate to find a Waterbending master , but there were none down here in the South Pole , and the North Pole was weeks away . " Katara ! " Sokka called , breaking into my thoughts . " Come help me with this ! " I walked out from behind the hill and saw that Sokka achieved in hunting down the seal . It was a nice big one , and would most likely last two days ' worth of meals . I ran up to him and picked up the other half of the seal , which had been dragging along the snow . We both walked down to the canoe , leaving fresh footprints in the snow . " Are we still going to go fishing ? " I asked , setting the seal down on the floor of the canoe . " Yes , but first let 's take this back to our camp . " he suggested . I nodded in agreement . The seal in the canoe would probably slow us down , if not tip the canoe over into the icy cold water . While looking into the water , and holding onto my necklace , I thought back to memories of my past , when my mother was still alive . " I 'll be right there , Mom ! " I called back . I washed my hands in a puddle before running to our tent . Sokka was already there , gulping down his meal quickly . " Sokka , what 's the hurry ? " My father asked . " Nothing . I just love this meal . " he replied . I looked at my plate and saw that arctic seal was for dinner - specially caught and made by my father . " Okay , Sokka , " my mother replied , laughing . She turned her gaze to me . " So , Katara , what moves did you learn today ? " I nodded , then made a small hole in the snow , making a puddle of water . I began pushing and pulling the water up . When I was done , I closed up the hole and looked at my family . My parents clapped their hands in applause , but Sokka stuck his tongue out at me . My dad noticed and stared at him . He then reluctantly applauded . " I don 't know why anybody needs magic . Normal people can hunt using some more advanced weapons , rather than fire or water . And you don 't need a glider in order to ' fly ' . " He remarked . " Yeah . They 're fighting in a war because of the Firebenders . " Sokka tartly replied . " If it wasn 't for firebenders , there probably wouldn 't be a war right now . " I began to cry at the fact that my brother didn 't appreciate my hard work . " You don 't hear me complaining about your hunting or fighting , Sokka ! " I yelled . " So why do you have to complain about my Waterbending ? " Without waiting for a reply , I ran into my room and lay on my bed , crying . After a few minutes , my mother came in . " Katara ? Are you okay ? " she asked . I looked up at her and began to sit upright . " It 's not fair ! Sokka never appreciates what I do ! " I cried . " No . But he should . You 're a wonderful waterbender , Katara . It is a gift that you have earned . You are strong , brave , and very talented . " I didn 't respond . " Katara , I want you to have something . " She pulled something out of her coat pocket and held it up for me to see . " See this necklace ? It is normally a betrothal necklace . It was first given to your grandmother , Kanna . When your father and I married , she gave it to be as a gift . Now I 'm passing it on down to you . Hold it close to your heart , and remember : not everyone has to enjoy what you do , as long as you have confidence in yourself . " I grabbed the necklace and put it on around my neck . I looked at the carving and saw it was a Waterbending symbol . I looked up at my mom with a smile . " Thank you , Mom . " I whispered , hugging her . A collision with the canoe brought me back from my thoughts . " Oh , good . Can you help me carry this seal to Gran Gran ? " Sokka asked . I nodded and picked up the seal , carrying it to Gran Gran 's tent . She wasn 't there , so they set the seal on the table , hoping no one took it , and ran back to the canoe for some fishing . I walked up to my mom one day , crying . " Mom ! Sokka never takes me anywhere ! Why can 't I go hunting and fishing with him ? " " Well , Katara , you 're too young right now to go hunting . If a seal was running up to you , you would be an easy dinner for it , because you 're too small to run very fast . " my mother replied . " But Sokka 's not that much taller than me ! " I argued . " No , but Sokka is older , and he knows what he 's doing out there . " she replied . " Besides , it 's a man 's job to do the hunting and fishing . Women are supposed to stay back here at the camp and do the chores and take care of the family . If everyone went out hunting , there wouldn 't be anyone to keep the tent clean , would there ? " I shook my head . " No . " I replied . " Another thing you should think about is injuries . " my mother continued . " What if we all went hunting - both men and women - and then we all came back with major injuries ? Who would be able to take care of us then ? " I wiped a tear off my chin . " I never thought of it that way . " I admitted . " See ? Even if we don 't get to hunt or fish with the men , we still get to help them out . " My mother remarked . " And a woman 's job is also to cook the meals , so when we cook what we catch , we could think about being there with them like it was happening right now , even if we weren 't really there . " " You 're welcome , my little Waterbender . " she replied , kissing my forehead . A jab in my arm brought me back to reality . Sokka was looking at me , his eyes gleaming . I looked around to see that two ice walls were now surrounding us , but there was still enough light from the entrance to see things in the water . " I just missed a fish , but I 'm glad I did , because you weren 't even watching me . " Sokka said , his eyes narrowing . " You know , if you 're really that tired , I could have just left you back home . " Sokka 's gaze turned into sympathy , and he didn 't say anything , instead just looked back into the water . As I watched , his eyes gleamed with excitement . I looked into the water and saw a fish swimming around him . " It 's not getting away from me this time . " Sokka muttered , barely audible for me to hear . " Watch and learn , Katara . This is how you catch a fish . " I stared at him with disgust . Before I could say anything , a flash caught my eye . I look down in surprise to see another fish come by me . I took off my glove off and , while having my hand stretched out towards the fish , began waving my hand up and down . After a few seconds , a bubble came out of the water , holding the fish in it . I gasped in happy surprise that I was able to catch it . " Sokka , look ! " I exclaimed , my eyes not trailing away from the bubble and fish . I began swaying my arms back and forth , feeling the force to control it from going back in the water . I moved the bubble over to my brother , hoping he would see it . Unfortunately , he was just about to strike . The end of his spear touched the water bubble , popping it and letting the fish jump back into the water . " Hey ! " I exclaimed , watching the fish swim away . Behind me , I heard my brother groan . I turned around to see that the water from the bubble splashed on him . I sighed , annoyed . " It 's not magic . It 's Waterbending . " I explained for the second time that day . " And it 's - . " Sokka interrupted my speech . " Yeah , yeah . An ancient art unique to our culture , blah , blah , blah . Look , I 'm just saying , " he squeezed some water out of his hair , " that if I had weird powers , I 'd keep my weirdness to myself . " " You 're calling me weird ? " I asked as I amusingly watched him make a muscle at himself through the water . " I 'm not the one that makes muscles at myself every time I see my reflection in the water . " He stopped and turned to look at me , obviously annoyed by my remark . But before he could say anything , we collided into a swift - flowing current and the canoe shook . We both looked ahead to see barriers of crushing ice in front of us . One piece came by and hit the boat . " Watch out ! " I yelled , watching the ice come closer into our way . As I looked , I saw an opening in the left direction . " Go left ! Go left ! " Unfortunately , the current took us to the right , heading straight towards two large floes of ice . As we got closer , the ice floes began closing in on us . Sokka and I watched in horror as they were just about to crush us inside the canoe . We jumped out of the canoe onto an ice floe just as the canoe was crushed . I slid down it onto the other side , barely stopping myself from plunging into the water . I looked around to see there was no way of escaping this place now . Sitting up , I moved over to where my brother was sitting . " You don 't like my steering ? Well , maybe you should 've waterbended us out of the ice . " he replied grimly , waving his arms mockingly . " So it 's my fault ? " I indignantly asked . " I knew I should 've left you at home ! Leave it to a girl to screw things up ! " Sokka replied . Now he had gone too far . " You are the most sexist , immature , nut - brained . . . I 'm embarrassed to be related to you ! " I yelled , waving my hands back and forth . I heard a crack , but I didn 't care . I wanted to get my point through Sokka 's head . " Ever since Mom died , I 've been the one doing all the work around camp while you 've been off playing soldier ! " Sokka looked nervous , then pointed behind me . He wasn 't listening to what I was saying . " Uh . . . Katara . . . " he began , but I interrupted him . " I even wash all the clothes ! Have you ever smelled your dirty socks ? Let me tell you , not pleasant ! " I yelled , throwing my arms back again . " No ! That 's it , I 'm done helping you ! From now on , you 're on your own ! " This time , when I threw my hands back , a big cracking sounded . I looked behind and saw the iceberg splitting apart and gasped . Chunks of iceberg fell from the iceberg , causing a big wave to push us backwards . We both laid against the floe under us , Sokka having his arm wrapped protectively around me . Once we stopped moving , he let go of me . " Yep . Congratulations , " he replied sarcastically . An eerie blue glow showed in the water . Bubbles began to burst out onto the surface . I stood up and walked away from the edge . An enormous round iceberg came up onto the surface . I walked a little closer to it , trying to see what was in it . It looked like a person , but how could someone get stuck in ice ? Then it opened its eyes , and its arrow tattoos began to glow . I gasped . " He 's alive ! " I exclaimed . " We have to help ! " I grabbed my brother 's club , pulled on my hood , and jumped across pieces of ice to the platform on the iceberg . Sokka began to follow . " Katara , get back here ! " he called . " We don 't know what that thing is ! " I ignored him . Once I reached the platform , I began to break the ice with the club . After a few hits , a gust of wind pushed her back , and a stream of light shot up into the sky . Sokka and I huddled together , waiting until the wind died down . When it did , we stood up and looked up at the top of the iceberg , now cracked open . I hid behind brother as he protectively held the spear up . Even though he wasn 't the smartest , he was still my brother , and I trusted him to protect me . The boy walked up , his eyes and arrows still glowing . " Stop ! " my brother shouted . Suddenly , all the lights died down and the strange boy 's tattoos and eyes stopped glowing . He lost his balance and began to fall down . I ran forward and , before he could hit the ground , caught him in my arms . Sokka walked over and began to poke him in the head with the end of his spear . I looked up at him , annoyed . " Stop that ! " I shouted , pushing it away . Once the spear was away , I turned the boy over and laid him on the ice . The boy slowly opened his eyes and gasped . I smiled at him , relieved to see he was still alive . " I need to ask you something , " he said weakly . " Will you go penguin - sledding with me ? " he asked , his voice now back to normal . " Uh . . . sure . I guess . " I responded , confused . Didn 't this boy know there were responsibilities and chores to do ? The boy quickly stood up , using a gust of wind to help . How did he do that ? Sokka gasped in shock , pointing his spear out again . The boy began to scratch his bald head as he looked around . " What 's going on here ? " he asked . " You tell us ! " Sokka responded aggressively , poking his spear into the boy 's sides . " How did you get in the ice ? And why aren 't you frozen ? " " I 'm not sure . " The boy replied , distractedly pushing Sokka 's spear away . A groan sounded from behind the crater of ice . The boy froze and then climbed up the side of the ice . I looked at my brother in confusion . He was as shocked as I was . I looked up the ice to where the boy vanished , and began to walk around it , figuring it would be too hard to climb up it . Sokka began to walk around as well . When we reached the other end , we saw a huge beast licking the boys back and dragging him up into the air . Sokka and I both looked disbelievingly at the creature . " Right . And this is Katara , my flying sister , " Sokka replied sarcastically . I glared annoyingly at him . Before anyone could say anything , the beast began to sneeze . Some snot shot out , landing on Sokka . He cowered and began rubbing against the snow , trying to get it off . " Don 't worry . It 'll wash out , " The boy replied cheerfully . Sokka put his hand up against some of the mucus and stretched it out . I covered my mouth in disgust . " So , do you guys live around here ? " the boy asked . I opened my mouth to reply , but Sokka stepped in front of me and pointed his spear threateningly at the boy . " Don 't answer that ! Did you see that crazy bolt of light ? ! He was probably trying to signal the Fire Navy , " he accusingly replied . I walked up in front of my brother . " Oh , I 'm sure he 's a spy for the Fire Navy , " I replied sarcastically . " You can tell by that evil look in his eyes . " The boy grinned innocently . I ignored it and stood upright again . " The paranoid one is my brother , Sokka . You never told us your name . " " I 'm A - . " the boy began , but then started shaking . Without warning , he sneezed and rocketed up into the air . I looked up and watched as he fell down the long distance and slid on the ice curb , finding his balance . " I 'm Aang , " he finished , rubbing his nose to stop himself from sneezing again . I stared at him in disbelief . " You just sneezed ! And flew ten feet in the air ! " My brother exclaimed , sharing my disbelief . " Really ? It felt higher than that . " Aang replied , looking up into the sky . I gasped , finally understanding how he could get up easily and fly once he sneezed . " You 're an airbender ! " I exclaimed . This was the first time I had ever seen an airbender , or any other kind of bender , for that matter , aside from firebenders . " Sure am ! " Aang replied . There was so much that I could learn from this bender about techniques and motions ! Before I could ask him anything , Sokka started waving his hands around . " Giant light beams , flying bison , airbenders . . . I think I got midnight sun madness . I 'm going home to where stuff make sense . " He stated , walking away from us , but then stopped when he realized there was no way off the ice . " Well , if you guys are stuck , Appa and I can give you a lift . " the young airbender offered . " We 'd love a ride ! " I exclaimed , running over to where Aang was . " Thanks ! " He jumped up on top of the bison 's head , then bent over to help me up . Grabbing his hand , I climbed up the side of Appa . " Oh no ! I 'm not getting on that fluffy snot monster ! " Sokka argued . " Are you hoping some other kind of monster will come along and give you a ride home ? " I asked , now on top of Appa . " You know , before you freeze to death ? " Sokka opened his mouth to argue , but closed it again , realizing there was no point in it . He picked up his spear and walked over to us . He threw up his spear , which landed in the saddle on Appa 's back , before grabbing Aang 's hand and climbing up onto the bison . He stood up and walked to the back of the saddle , sitting down crossly . I sat in the front , wanting to watch the young airbender . " Okay ! First - time fliers , hang on tight ! " Aang yelled . " Appa , yip yip ! " " Wow . That was truly amazing , " Sokka commented sarcastically . I glared at him , annoyed . Why did he always have to make sarcastic remarks ? " Appa 's just a little tired , " Aang responded confidently . " A little rest and he 'll be soaring through the sky . You 'll see . " I smiled at the young airbender . He smiled back . I enjoyed being around his cheerfulness . It was much better than with my groaning brother . I began to move to the back of the saddle when I realized he was still smiling at me . " Why are you smiling at me like that ? " I asked , feeling a little uncomfortable . " Oh , I was smiling ? " the boy innocently asked . I smiled again at his innocence . That upbeat attitude , unfortunately , was disrupted by Sokka 's groaning . I angrily glared at him while crawling in the saddle to sit next to him . Appa was still slowly moving through the water . I didn 't mind how slow the ride was , though , as long as we got back to the Tribe . " I don 't trust that kid , " Sokka whispered once I sat comfortably next to him . " I still believe he 's from the Fire Navy . " " Well , he is our only hope to get back home tonight . You 'll have to deal with it until then . After that , you can do whatever , " I replied . " Besides , why would an airbender help the Fire Nation , especially after what happened to all the other airbenders ? " Sokka sighed . " Fine . But only until we get back home . " I thought back to the time shortly after my mother died . I stood outside , grieving for my mother 's death . " Katara , did I ever tell you about the Air Nomad Genocide ? " Gran Gran asked . " No . " I responded , a tear running down my cheek . " Well , come inside , and I 'll tell you all about it , " she responded , gesturing with my arm to come into her tent . I obediently followed . She sat down on my bed , and gestured for me to sit down next to her . Once I was comfortably seated , she began her story . " There used to be four nations that all lived in peace together : the Water Tribes , Earth Kingdom , Fire Nation , and Air Nomads . There was an Avatar - a master of all four elements - as well , to make sure all four nations were in peace , " my grandmother began . " But about 94 years ago , during a comet , the Fire Nation attacked all the Air Temples , leaving no airbender left alive . We haven 't seen any new Avatars announced yet , and they usually find out that they 're the Avatar on their sixteenth birthday . But it has been well past sixteen years now , and still no announcement has been made . Many believe the cycle has been broken , and there will never be an Avatar again . Others believe , since there was no announcement of an Avatar from the airbenders , that the cycle ended before the genocide . I have not lost hope in the Avatar , and I hope that one day he will return . But I wanted to tell you this story to show you that your mother was a big loss for a lot of the Southern Water Tribe , but the Air Nomads ' death was even greater . So just remember about the genocide , and don 't lose hope in the Avatar . " I woke up to see stars in the black sky . Night had fallen , but we were still riding on Appa . Sokka was sleeping next to me , snoring loudly . I couldn 't see Aang from here , so I crawled across the saddle over to him . Once I reached the front of the saddle , I saw him laying down on the bison 's head , his arms tucked under his head . " Hey , " I greeted , resting my head on my arm . " Oh , no . I didn 't know him . I mean , I knew people who knew him , but I didn 't , " He replied , sitting up . " Sorry . " " Okay . Just curious , " I replied . If an airbender was the Avatar , and the Avatar was still alive , there must be some other airbenders around , just hiding . I smiled at him . " Good night . " " Sleep tight , " he replied as I crawled back next to Sokka . It didn 't take long for me to fall into a deep sleep . I opened my eyes to see the sun shining brightly . We were back in the Southern Water Tribe , but where were Aang and Appa ? Then I recognized my mother and father standing on a small hill , watching the tribe do their daily routine . I ran up the hill to meet up with them . They saw me coming and smiled , opening their arms wide to me . I ran as fast as I could , jumping into their arms as I reached them . But then I fell into the snow . I looked around , but could not see Mom or Dad anywhere . I cried out desperately for them , wanting to be in their arms right now . Gran Gran and Sokka saw me , their gaze sympathetic . I realized Dad was gone again , and Mom was dead , just like what it was now . I woke up to a nudge in the shoulder . Opening my eyes , I saw the first pale light of dawn showing . Sokka was prodding me with his spear . I groaned , but sat up anyways , stretching . I realized we were back at the camp now , but this time it was for real . I crawled up to the front of the saddle to see Aang sleeping . " Don 't wake him , " my brother whispered . " Let him sleep . I don 't want to have to deal with him until after I teach the little warriors . " " Well , you 're the one who found him , so you deal with him . I 'm going to tell Gran Gran that we have a visitor , " Sokka replied , before standing up to get off Appa . I sighed , then stood up and stepped over the saddle , making sure not to step on Aang . Once I was safely over and found my balance , I picked the young boy up . He was heavier than I expected . I carefully stepped over the saddle again , making sure not to lose my balance and completely fall off . I used Appa 's tail as a ramp to get down . I decided to let Aang lie down in Sokka 's tent . He wouldn 't mind , since he would be teaching the little kids about how to become a warrior . As I neared his tent , Gran Gran was waiting for me . Sokka was nowhere to be seen , but I knew he had already told her about Aang . " Is that our visitor ? " she asked . " Flying bison ? " my grandmother repeated , surprised . " I thought those were all extinct . " She began examining the boy , her eyes widening as she saw the tattoos . " The symbol of an airbending master , " she whispered . " Katara , where are you taking him ? " " To Sokka 's tent for now , until he wakes up , " I replied , motioning my head to the tent only a few feet away . I nodded in agreement . Gran Gran moved out of the way , and I finished carrying Aang to Sokka 's tent . Once we reached it , I laid the boy gently down onto the floor . It was really hot in here , so I carefully took off his jacket and shirt , not paying any attention to what was on his back . Once I was done , I carefully set him down , put the blanket over him , then left the tent . I decided to check out how my brother 's training session was going . When I reached them , all the kids were sitting around , bored . " The men stand up for their friends and family against enemies . Without that , many of us would be killed in an instant . For example , our current enemy is the Fire Nation . Many of them are firebenders , " he saw me approach and smiled . " Katara will show you how destructive bending can be . " " Just show them some of your moves , " Sokka insisted , irritated . I decided to do a move that would get back at him . I made some snow from a tower slide off and topple onto him . He fell , covered in snow . The pupils laughed , and I smiled mockingly . " You see ? " Sokka stated to his pupils when he emerged from the snow . " Any type of bending can be destructive , " I sighed and walked away , not wanting to listen to anything else . " Katara , " a voice called . I turned to see Gran Gran walking up to me . " I talked with all the women . They think we should meet our visitor now . Where is Sokka ? " " He 's doing one of his training sessions , " I replied , pointing in the direction that I just came from . " Okay . I 'll go get him . You go get the airbender , " she responded , before walking to Sokka . I nodded , then walked over to Sokka 's tent . Aang was still sleeping , but now he was fidgeting . I sat next to him and began shaking him awake . The airbender sat up , gasping for air . " It 's okay , we 're in the village now , " I stood up and pointed out of the tent . " Come on , get ready ! Everybody 's waiting to meet you . " Aang grabbed his shirt and began putting it on . It wasn 't until now that I realized his tattoos extended down his back , arms , and feet . I gasped with wonder at it , then grabbed his arm when he was almost finished . I couldn 't wait for the village to meet him ! Aang let out a surprised gasp as I dragged him out . Sokka was sitting next to the tent , sharpening his boomerang . Just as I 'd hoped , the whole village , including the children , were standing around waiting to meet Aang . I stopped walking about four feet away from them and let go of the airbender . I watched as Aang clasped his hands together and did a respectful bow to everyone . To my dismay , the women moved their children closer to them protectively . " Uh , why are they all looking at me like that ? " he asked , obviously uncomfortable by the tribe 's greeting . He began checking his clothes . " Did Appa sneeze on me ? " My grandmother stepped forward a few paces . " Well no one has seen an airbender in a hundred years , " she explained . " We thought they were extinct , until my granddaughter and grandson found you . " " Extinct ? " Aang repeated disbelievingly . " It 's not for stabbing , " Aang replied , amused . He used airbending and took it away from Sokka . " It 's for airbending . " He opened it up to reveal an orange glider inside . Sokka stepped back in fright , covering his head with his hands . " Check again ! " Aang replied before jumping into the air with his glider . Sokka and I took a pace back , but watched as he flew around . The kids gasped with admiration as they watched him fly around . " He 's flying ! " Marie exclaimed . The young airbender soared down close to the ground , flying between the crowd , then lifted back into the air , watching us . " It 's amazing ! " the little girl said . Aang soared over me , and I smiled broadly at him . He turned sideways , still lying , and closed his eyes in a big smile . The moment soon ended when he crashed into some snow only a little ways away . I covered my hands over my mouth as I watched him get unstuck from the snow . When he fell onto the ground , I ran over to help him . " My watchtower ! " Sokka exclaimed . I ignored his statement and reached my hand out to Aang . Some snow had tumbled onto him , but he took my hand gratefully . " That was amazing ! " I exclaimed while pulling him up . Aang closed his glider , and at the same moment some more snow fell , this time landing on Sokka . He quickly got out of it . " Great . You 're an airbender , Katara 's a waterbender . Together you can waste time all day long . " Sokka commented , annoyed . He soon escaped from the snow mound and stalked off . " You 're a waterbender ? " Aang asked , his voice filled with surprise and admiration . I walked over to her , leaving Aang with the rest of the tribe . Once Aang was out of earshot , I turned to my grandmother . " I told you , he 's the real thing , Gran Gran . " I blurted . " I finally found a bender to teach me ! " " Katara , try not to put all your hopes in this boy , " Gran Gran replied calmly . " But he 's special . I can tell ! " I remarked . I clenched my hands together and closed my eyes . " I sense he 's filled with much wisdom . " I looked over at Aang . To my dismay , he had his staff stuck to his tongue , entertaining the kids . " See ? " Aang stated . " Now my tongue is stuck to my staff ! " One of the boys pulled Aang 's staff , trying to get it off . I looked worriedly at my grandmother , who was also staring at him . " Warriors ! Time for another training session ! " Sokka called from the top of a hill . The kids sighed and walked away from Aang over to my brother . The girls walked over to their mothers , prepared to help in chores . " Come on , Katara , " my grandmother urged . I obeyed and walked away with my grandmother . " By the way , I saw your catch from yesterday . We didn 't eat it , since I figured it would be better if we all had it together . Do you want to help me cook it for tonight ? " " You can help me start cooking the seal , and then you can go do your chores . " my grandmother replied . I walked with her to her tent , where the seal was still lying down on he table . I picked it up and set it outside near the fireplace . Gran Gran brought over some sticks and rope . I stuck a couple sticks in the ground , and poked another stick through the seal . My grandmother came out with a knife and took the fur off the seal . I put the stick with the meat onto the other two sticks , tying a rope around them to make sure they didn 't move . I walked inside the tent to get the fire candle . Once I had it , I walked back outside and placed some sticks under the seal , then set them on fire to cook the seal . " Well done , Katara , " my grandmother praised . " I 'll take care of it from here . You go do your chores . " I smiled and ran off to my tent . I looked around and saw barrels of clothes in there , all of them being Sokka 's . I wanted to just ignore them and let Sokka do them , like I said , but then I remembered what my mother said many years ago , and decided to do them anyways . I grabbed the first barrel and brought it over to the corner of the tent . I grabbed a wooden bucket and filled it up with water , using waterbending to help make it quicker . I added some soap to the water and carried it over to the barrel in the corner . I pulled out the first piece of clothing , which happened to be my brother 's sock . I wrinkled my nose , but began cleaning it anyways . After only a few minutes , the first barrel was empty . I moved over the other two and began working on them . One by one , all of Sokka 's clothes were cleaned . I went outside , carrying the soaked clothes , and hung them up on the line . As I finished putting up the last item of clothing , my grandmother came walking over to me . " No , I haven 't , " I replied . " But don 't worry . I 'll look for him . " Without another word , I ran off to find Aang . I decided to look over where Sokka was having his lesson first , to see if Aang might have been interested and went there . I recognized Shiloh waving his arm around , but I didn 't see Aang anywhere . I watched as Sokka asked something , and all the kids raised their hands . Sokka face - palmed himself as the boys stood up and walked away . " Wow ! Everything freezes in there ! " he exclaimed , pulling his pants up a little higher . The kids laughed with him at the fact . " Uh ! " Sokka groaned . " Katara , get him out of here ! This lesson is for warriors only ! " Sokka began to walk away . Before I could stop him , I heard a " Whee " sound from in front . I looked to see the kids sliding down Appa 's tail and landing in snow mounds . The bison 's tail was rested upon Sokka 's spear , which was supported by two sticks . As another kid slid down and landed on the snow , Sokka began to run over there . I laughed for a little bit , realizing that it was the first time I had laughed in years . I ran over to Appa 's side to hear what Sokka had to say . " Stop ! " he was angrily saying . " Stop it right now ! What 's wrong with you ? ! We don 't have time for fun and games with the war going on ! " Aang slid down Appa , using airbending to slow himself from plummeting straight down . " What war ? What are you talking about ? " he asked , genuinely confused . " He 's kidding , right ? " he asked again . I looked at him , worried . Was he really joking , or had he been serious ? The War was a hundred years old now , and almost every living person knew about it . So why was Aang confused when my brother mentioned it ? " I 'll go talk to him . " I replied . " Maybe I can find out if he was joking or not . " Sokka nodded in agreement . As I walked around , I heard my brother call the kids back together to continue his lesson . I veered away from the direction that Aang had disappeared to and walked to the edge of the island . If Aang wanted to catch an otter - penguin , he would need some supplies . I watched as some fish swam around . Using the same technique I used yesterday , I brought up a couple fish , then tucked them inside my arm sleeve before walking over to find Aang . It didn 't take very long , especially with the penguins making their noises . I walked around a hill to see Aang chasing after a penguin . " Aang ? " I called . He must have not heard me , because he continued to chase after a penguin without glancing up to see who ws speaking . " Hey , come on little guy , " he stated , following a penguin . " Wanna go sledding ? " He jumped , trying to catch it , but it was too fast for the young airbender , and Aang fell in the snow . He turned around onto his back and noticed me before airbending himself up again . " I have a way with animals , " he said , before chasing after another penguin , mimicking their noise and walk . I laughed . " Aang , I 'll help you catch a penguin if you teach me waterbending , " I informed him . He was hanging onto the tail of one and being pulled through the snow . " You 've got a deal ! " he exclaimed , letting go of the penguin . " Just one little problem . " He got up into a sitting position , using his airbending to help . " I 'm an airbender , not a waterbender . Isn 't there someone in your tribe who can teach you ? " " This isn 't right . A waterbender needs to master water . " He looked down , thinking . " What about the North Pole ? There 's another Water Tribe up there , right ? Maybe they have waterbenders who can teach you . " " Maybe , " I replied . " But we haven 't had contact with our sister tribe in a long time . It 's not exactly turn right at the second glacier ! It 's on the other side of the world ! " " But you forget , I have a flying bison ! " he pointed out . " Appa and I can personally fly you to the North Pole ! Katara , we 're going to find you a master ! " " That 's . . . " I began happily , then stopped , unsure of what to do . " I mean , I don 't know . I 've never left home before . " " Okay . Listen closely , my young pupil , " I began , acting like a teacher . " Catching penguins is an ancient and sacred art . " I took a fish out of my sleeve and threw it to him . " Observe ! " Aang caught it , and right at that moment , all the penguins began swarming around him . The young airbender laughed , falling in the midst of the penguins . I laughed as well and pulled out another piece of fish . The penguins smelled it and began waddling over to me . Aang caught a penguin before they all disappeared , holding it tight so he didn 't lose it . The penguins began to knock me over , but before they could , I gave the fish to one of the otter - penguins and picked it up . " Come on , Aang ! " I called , running off with the penguin . Aang dashed away from the other penguins and jumped into the air , sledding down the hill . I followed closely . The two of us started screaming with joy as we slid down . In some areas , he would get in front of me , and in some areas I would get in front of him . I used a ramp to get in front of him , but he had the same idea and went up the same slope . We were side by side for a little bit , and then he used another , smaller , ramp and got ahead of me . I used the next jump to land next to Aang again . We both laughed and shouted out as we rode over snowy bumps . " You still are a kid ! " Aang pointed out . We rode through a tunnel of ice . I was in the lead and tried to hold Aang back by constantly changing my direction when he wanted to pass me . Aang solved this problem by increasing his speed with airbending , enabling him to race over the ceiling past me . The tunnel leveled out on an open plain of ice where we got off our rides . I looked up and saw a dark shadow . It was the Fire Nation ship that waterbenders had captured many years ago . Aang walked over to the shipwreck . " Whoah ! What is that ? " he asked in awe . Haven 't you seen one of these before ? I wondered , but decided not to speak the words , remembering what he said to Sokka about the War . " A Fire Navy ship . And a very bad memory for my people , " I said , in a slightly dark tone . Aang began to approach the wreckage . Knowing the rules , I tried to stop him . " Aang , stop ! We 're not allowed to go near it ! The ship could be booby - trapped ! " " If you want to be a bender , you have to let go of fear . " He said . I pondered over that remark for a moment . I made my decision , and walked toward Aang , scared . We ventured closer toward the ship . Aang helped me climb some of the blocks of ice that were too high to reach . We crawled through a hole in the hull of the ship and walked through the silent rooms of the shipwreck . I heard some squeaking , and had a haunted feeling . Aang entered a room stocked to the rim with weapons . " This ship has haunted my tribe since Gran - Gran was a little girl , " I explained . " It was part of the Fire Nation 's first attacks . " " Okay , back up . " he said . " I have friends all over the world , even in the Fire Nation . He picked up one of the weapons to inspect it . " I 've never seen any war . " I looked at him , confused . The War had been going on for a hundred years . How could somebody not know about it ? " Aang , how long were you in that iceberg ? " I asked . " I don 't know . " he said uncertainly . " A few days , maybe ? " I then started putting the pieces together . He had no idea about the War at all , and he was being truthful about it ! " I think it was more like a hundred years ! " " Think about it . The War is a century old . " I remarked . " You don 't know about it because , somehow , you were in there the whole time ! It 's the only explanation ! " I watched as his expression turned from disbelief to comprehension . He backed away and fell to the floor , shocked . " A hundred years ? " He exclaimed sadly . " I can 't believe it . " " I did get to meet you , " he said cheerfully , looking up at me . I warmly smiled at him and offered my hand to help him up . " Come on , let 's get out of here , " I said . The longer we stayed in here , the more haunting it seemed . He grabbed my hand , and I pulled him up . We walked out of the room and back to the ship entrance . " Aang , let 's head back , this place is creepy , " I said , but instead , he turned into another room . I followed him . He began to trip . I heard a crash and realized it was a trap ! We were stuck in the room , with nowhere to go . I looked through the bars with Aang , realizing our mistake . " What 's that you said about booby traps ? " he asked . The gears and engines of the shipwreck began to power up and function . Aang and I followed the movements of the machines in shock . A flare was fired into the air . I was going to be in a lot of trouble now . " Uh oh , " Aang said as we watched the flare explode in the air . He turned around and , without warning , picked me up in his arms . " Hold on tight ! " he exclaimed , before jumping through a hole in the roof and down the side of the ship . I held on to the young airbender as tightly as I could . When we landed on the flat ground , he put me down . " Don 't ever scare me like that again ! " I exclaimed . We began to run back to the village . I tried not to think about how much trouble I would be by Gran - Gran and some of the other adults in the tribe . I just hoped the village wasn 't attacked by firebenders before we made it back . Wikia is a free - to - use site that makes money from advertising . We have a modified experience for viewers using ad blockers Wikia is not accessible if you 've made further modifications . Remove the custom ad blocker rule ( s ) and the page will load as expected . Categories : |
The whole episode started when Ana and I put the flour into a special bowl . Since we were science student at our school , we decided to mix the flour with hot water so that there would be no bacteria in the mixture . After we kneaded the dough , it became hard and we could not press it a anymore . We were confused looking at our " pancakes " but we still put them into a microwave oven . Within minutes , we looked at cooked pancakes and saw that the dough did not expand and they got burnt . However , we took them out . Oh gosh ! We tried sharing a piece . Imagine our new " pancakes ' . It was tasteless and very hard . We thought we were eating parts of steel . Suddenly , we heard a car parked at the front house . We knew our mum and dad together with uncle and auntie had arrived home . Without our expectation , my mum and aunty went to the kitchen and screamed at the top of their voices when they saw the messy kitchen . They also got shocked looking at our faces full of flour but at the same time they could not control their laughters . Without hesitation , my dad and uncle ran to the kitchen as they thought something bad had happened in the kitchen . Imagine they too laughed at us . Ana and I looked each other and we too laughed . Fortunately , my parents bought some breakfast for us as they knew that we would be starving . We took the food and quickly ate them in a dining room . It was very funny , interesting and memorable experiences I ever had in my life . I guessed next time I must take up cooking lesson , then I would not be starving anymore . SYAHIRAH WAHAB Yesterday , an unemployed man was standing at the top floor of an abandoned 16 storey office building , ready to jump down from the building . He was depressed for being fired from his job by his boss . When he was about to jump , he remembered his aged sickly parents who needed care . The thought of his hard working brother who supports them also came to mind . Suddenly , feelings of guilt and remorse began to fill his chest , as he choked in tears , slowly he stepped back and left the building , and went back home to take care of his parents . On the fifth floor , of the same building , a foreigner who had kidnapped a young girl , wanted to kill the child because he didn 't get the amount of money which he had requested for from the child 's parents . As he was contemplating whether to kill the child or not , thoughts of his only child who had been killed by a kidnapper a few years back flooded his mind . How he had cried non stop for five days and how sad and crushed he had been . Finally , the foreigner decided to let the child go . Just below the building , around the corner , three youngsters were getting ready to race along the northern highway . They were illegal racers . As they were getting ready to race , one of the youngsters started to think about his parents . How they worked hard everyday so that he could go to school and get a formal education . He got down from his motorbike and walked away from the race , never to look back again . In a school , few meters away from the building , the mid - year examination had just began . Almost all the students were fooling around and were not serious about the examination , but one student was thinking about his uncle . How his uncle had raised him since he was a child . How his uncle had sacrificed his life , so that he can go to school and get an education . He didn 't join the others but focused on his examination . In my classroom , I saw my classmate was crying . Then I asked him how could I help . He told me that his English writing essay assignment was not ready yet and scared would be humiliated again by the teacher concerned . He told me repeatedly sometimes the teacher would ask him to stand on the chair . So he could not take this kind of punishment . Then I asked him why he could write the essay . He kept mum and still refused to answer after much persusasion . I could not understand his rationality and wondered why he could not even write a few lines of English essay . Afterall we were trained by the same English teacher on the concept of Descriptive essay and Narrative essay . I could write english essay with ease or whatever titles that the teacher gave in the classroom . I could recall how I manage to acquire this expertise of writing english essay . Most of my classmates envied me . So it was quite normal for me when most of them boycotted me in the class . Only a handful wanted to share my knowledge . I told him who was still choking with tears to learn this art from me . Firstly it is compulsory to have a dictionary with a vocabulary exercise book . Learning a foreign language without a dictionary is going to be a waste as many new words needed to be referred and understand in mother 's tongue language . Secondly students need to do a lot of reading almost everyday at least for one hour . Reading alone is not enough but it has to be collaborated with a dictionary and a vocabulart exercise book . The source is on the various model essay books available in the market place . Thirdly students must be able to construct sentences of their own to express their understanding . By doing so , then they are able write better sentences in their essay writing . It is imperative students should try out their own initiatives by doing their own research to get as many titles as possible and practise essay writing . I told him I was lucky as my previous English teacher who trained me since in primary 4 was a very exceptional , committed and dedicated teacher . Again I told my classmate , he could go to my home and I am prepared to train him . The next day on the way back home , I was on dad 's car when suddenly I saw an accident happened . It happened right in front of my eyes . A primary 2 pupil was dragged by a motorcyclist . She was crying in pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You may continue from here . . . . Yesterday , an unemployed man was standing at the top floor of an abandoned 16 storey office building , ready to jump down from the building . He was depressed for being fired from his job by his boss . When he was about to jump , he remembered his aged sickly parents who needed care . The thought of his hard working brother who supports them also came to mind . Suddenly , feelings of guilt and remorse began to fill his chest , as he choked in tears , slowly he stepped back and left the building , and went back home to take care of his parents . On the fifth floor , of the same building , a foreigner who had kidnapped a young girl , wanted to kill the child because he didn 't get the amount of money which he had requested for from the child 's parents . As he was contemplating whether to kill the child or not , thoughts of his only child who had been killed by a kidnapper a few years back flooded his mind . How he had cried non stop for five days and how sad and crushed he had been . Finally , the foreigner decided to let the child go . Just below the building , around the corner , three youngsters were getting ready to race along the northern highway . They were illegal racers . As they were getting ready to race , one of the youngsters started to think about his parents . How they worked hard everyday so that he could go to school and get a formal education . He got down from his motorbike and walked away from the race , never to look back again . In a school , few metres away from the building , the mid - year examination had just began . Almost all the students were fooling around and were not serious about the examination , but one student was thinking about his uncle . How his uncle had raised him since he was a child . How his uncle had sacrificed his life , so that he can go to school and get an education . He didn 't join the others but focused on his examination . Assalamualaikum sir : ) Heee first time hantar essay dkt sir ! Ohmyyy . My teacher sruh buat essay psl " It had been raining blaaa3 . . . " mggu dpn dh kna htr . So , sir tlg check essay sy yg errr byk slh kot . Essay yg sir sruh buat tuh . . on the way . Haha . Thanks sir . Stay cute and keep awesome - It had been raining all day , at times it rains like cat and dogs . At that moment , I slightly doubt the weather forecast since it forecasted that the sun was going to scorch mercilessly . I sighed with relief and stared at the clock with bemusement . It was almost 6 . 00 p . m . but mom did not returned from the supermarket yet . The sky was getting darker . " Oh mom , where are you ? " I was feeling a bit uneasy . . I dragged myself to close my bedroom 's door . Out of the blue , a sudden crickling sound that came from the kitchen made me jump in fright . All of a sudden , I feel a surge of pure terror , my hearts started to thud in panic . I could not breathe easily knowing that there might be someone in my kitchen . Oh my god ! This thing cannot be happening to me , someone was breaking into my house ? Nobody by my side for the moment and how could I tackle this . The fact that I need to face the person all by myself made me jittery and wanted to burst into tears . But , I took a deep breath plucking my courage and I grabbed my hockey stick . Then I bravely went downstairs despite my hands were slightly shaking . To my horror , my worst nightmare was answered . It wasn 't what I expected . As I opened the kitchen 's door , there was a big , plump rat staring nastily at me . Thus , made me screamed on top of my voice as though the rat was going to bite me . Now , it was between me and that nasty rat . It would be another war . In a blink of an eye , the rat was on my foot and I ran around the dining table . Still it wasn 't enough for that nasty rat , it jumped on me thus making me yelled ! Oh gosh ! " This war is not going to be over yet " I quipped . Unknowingly , as the battle between the rat and I was progressing , my hockey stick which I held firmly hit one pile of plates on the table and the plates were scattered into pieces . As I was too engross to hit the plump rat , I accidentally stepped on the pieces of broken plates and the pieces hurt my feet . It was really bad . As my feet , was prickling with pain , I sat down , defeated while rat took the opportunity escaped through a hole on the rooftop . . My legs were trembling , my fingers twisted slightly . God , what a fiasco ! As I was looking for cotton bud and plaster to attend to my injured foot , the bell rang and the sound " I 'm home , honey " , echoing in my ears . Then , mom went straight to the kitchen to put away the groceries . She stood rooted in disbelief . She looked at me with red eyes , looking at my bleeding feet and then looked at the kitchen before saying , ' ' What have gone wrong , my dear ? " I told her the entire story while she was cleaning my wound . I was really terrified that she would scold me but then she looked up and curved a smile , trying hard to refrain herself from laughing out loud . She told me that she had the same experience as I did . It was even worse where she needed to battle with two rats . The clock then striked at 7 . 30 p . m and we were all done cleaning up the mess that I had unwittingly created . Without hesitation , I asked my mom , what about that nasty rat which certainly would come back . My mum confidently answered , " Don 't worry my dear , we will make sure this round the rat won 't escape . . Maybe we will make the rat eat what it likes , the poison rat . " I smiled and hoped there would never be another titanic battle with the rat . But if ever the rat come back again , this time I hope it would face me and my mom . Natasya was very sure that she didn 't do it . She tried to explained it but Miss Raudah didn 't trust her . She had no idea who took the money . She could not hold back her tears when the teacher accused her stealing the money . The story began when Miss Raudah , Natasya 's English teacher entrusted her to keep an eye on her purse . Then , the teacher went to the ladies and left Natasya alone in the class . When Maria passed the class , she saw Natasya sat lonely while studying and a black elegant stylish purse beside her . Maria had an idea to frame on Natasya . She was so jealous of Natasya since the first day Natasya reported to school . Indeed Maria was a jealous girl . She envied that Natasya always being praised by the teachers . Maria was considered as a wet blanket and sometimes labelled as a black sheep in her class . Nobody in the class liked her . Then , she entered the class and spoke to Natasya . She told Natasya that someone wanted to see her outside . Natasya immediately stood up and went outside . Maria was so happy that Natasya believed her . Immediately she took a lot of money from the purse and put it into Natasya 's bag . When Maria was taking the money , she didn 't relised that Aliya saw her from a small window on the other side of the class . Aliya tried to leave the place secretly but Maria stopped her . Maria quickly held Aliya 's hand and said " hey ! Just pretend that you didn 't know anything about this . " Aliya got scared and nodded her head . A few minutes later , Natasya entered the class and continued her reading . Then Miss Raudah came into the class to take her purse back and thanked Natasya . While walking out of the class , Miss Raudah found out that the zip where she put the cash in was unzipped . She went back to Natasya and said , " Oh gosh ! where is my money ? " . Then she asked Natasya . Natasya denied taking the the money . Miss Raudah was a bit mad and told herthat she had to refer the case to the Principal . Then , Maria came in and told Miss Raudah that she saw Natasya unzipped the bag and took the cash . It was the first time I saw her and I decided to approach her . I was in the library doing a research for my English project . She was there , sat at the secluded area in the library . She was wearing a big with a thick , black rimmed spectacles . Her hair was tied in a messy bun with a long fringe at the front that cover most of her forehead . She was a new student in my class and was popular because of her nerd personality . She was just a typical grade A student . Nobody wanted to befriend her because she tend to sit alone . She was Farah . " Hello , can I sit here ? " I asked . She was looking at me with a blank face . She just nodded her head and went back to read . I put all my belongings on the table and sat in front of her . After a while , I started to feel boring . I peeked at her book title and she was reading a thick history book . " Wow , she is really a nerd . " I thought . I tried to start a conversation with her but she was either nodding or shaking her head . I was frustrated and stopped my conversation with her . She was hard to approach . After that , I just went out of the library after I said goodbye and got no replies . " Urgghh ! I hate physic ! " I screamed inside my heart . I was at the second question and I still cant solve it . I was frustrated with myself . " Dina , come on . Lets go to the canteen . " My bestfriend , Maria asked . I told her that I am still full . She went to canteen with my other classmates . I was still trying to solve the ' easy ' question . I looked around and found that there was only Farah and me in the classroom . Out of the blue , I thought why dont I use this opportunity to ask Farah about the Physic 's question and maybe befriend her . " Hi . Umm . . . Can you help me to solve this problem ? " She looked up and nodded . She began explaining to me how to solve the problem . Her explaination was so clear that I ended up solving it in just 5 minutes . She helped me go through my other problems and we didnt realize that the bell just rang . I thanked her and she just smiled . After that day , I always refer to her if I had any problems in my studying . One day , I arrived an hour early to school because my father had to go somewhere for his business trip . I was walking lazily to my locker and got my books . On the way to class , I heard a very nive voice sang Waiting Outside The Lines by Greyson Chance . I stopped walking and peeked through the door of an empty class . I was greatly surprised when I found that the voice belonged to Farah . I walked slowly towards her . After a momant , she realized that I was behind her and was flustering . Her cheek was in a tint of pink and she was blushing . I told her that her voice was heavenly . She just whispered a small thank you . Suddenly I got an idea . As a music club 's member , I thought that she was perfect to be the lead vocalist for our school 's music club . The music club was looking for a new lead vocalist for the national competition . I told the idea to her and she was hesitated . Before I could persuade her , the bell rang . I told other music club members about Farah and they agreed to listen to her before accepting her as our new lead vocalist . I began pestering her for about a week and at last she agreed . I brought her to the music room . Our school was a private school for the rich and the students who got scolarship only so it had a really big music room full of music equipment like piano , drum , cello and many more . After Farah sang , they all clapped and agreed to take Farah as our new lead vocalist . We began practicing every day for the national competition and I began to spend more and more time with Farah . Me and Farah became bestfriend in a matter of time . I always hanged out with her . I didnt realize that Maria was jealous of our friendship . I admitted that it was partly my fault and Maria began to give me cold - shoulders . What i didnt know was Maria bullied Farah behind my back . Luckily it was not too severe . She only told Farah to do all her homeworks , bought lunch , and ran all her errands . I knew Maria 's wrong - doings when she slipped her tounge . I was surprised and scolded her . She told me that she was jealous and crying . She ran and crossed the road without looking . There was a car came fast but it was too late . Luckily Farah managed to grab Maria 's hand and pulled her to the side . I ran and hugged both of them , thanked God for saving their life . Thankfully , they just got minor scratches . Maria was crying and hugged Farah . She was thankful towards her . From that day onwards , we became bestfriends . The national competition day came fast . Maria was there to support us and she was sitting in the front row . I was playing the piano and Farah sang . Meanwhile the other music club 's members played other instruments . Our heart was beating fast waiting for the results . At last , they announced the winner and we got first place . We were hugging and congratulated each other . Maria came and congratulated both of us . We hugged and took as many pictures together . MISS RANDOM , Natasya was very sure that she didn 't do it . It was not her fault that the televisyen screen has broken into pieces this morning . She recalled that she had a small arguement with her twin , Natisya . This pair of twin is definitely different from the other twins as normally twin relationship is like tongue and teeth . Unlike this one , Natasya and Natisya are always at logger heads . They like to be on their own and seldom see each other although staying in the same house . They liked to do their own bussiness . They can 't see each other , everytime when they meet they will fight like dog and cat . The televisyen was indeed the new one when their mum got it on the eve of her birthday . Their father presented to mum on their 25th anniversary . The incident happened when Natisya came home . " tap , tap , tap " , the sound of Natisya 's footstep walking entered the house . Natisya , headed straight to her room and looked for her new Blackberry phone . Natisya took a longer time to find her phone as everyone knows her bad behaviour . " Where 's my phone ? " she yelled . Then , her eyes was focused at one item on the table . It was her phone . " Yeah " Natisya was happy when she found her phone . As she grabbed her phone , the phone ' scream ' . " Bit , bit , bit " it was a message from Sofwan , her boyfriend . Natasya viewed the message " Hi baby , from today onwards , our relationship is off " . Natisya was baffled . Her tears started to roll down her cheeks . Soon she pondered and tried to figure out what went wrong . Everybody in her circles knew that Sofwan was such a successfull playboy , and this time Natisya had it . " Why , why , why " Natisha screamed at the top of her voice . At the other end of the room , her twin sister , Natasya overheard the scream . Then she hurriedly ran to Natisya 's room . " What 's wrong with you ? , Are you out of your mind ? " Natasya quivered . Natisya did not reply but her furious face did . She stood up and slapped Natasya " Ouch ! " Natasya yelled in pain . She dashed out of the room but Natisya followed her . At the living room , another heated arguement happened . Suddenly Natisya took her mother 's vase and threw it towards Natasya . Natasya managed to avoid it and the vase strucked the televisyen at the corner end . " Oh my God " . Natisya felt so scared and guilty . She ran to her room and locked the door . Natasya then called her mother at her office . " Hello mom , came home quickly something bad happen " . " Brum , brum , brum . " Puan Siti , the twins mother arrived home . " Natasya go and get some water and a clean towel at the kitchen " Natasya complied the order . After a few minutes , Natisya awakened and still felt dizzy . After everything settled down , then Puan Siti asked , " Who actually causing all this messy ? " Natasya nodded her head silently trying to cover up for her sister . Puan Siti gave a stern warning and then decided to cut Natasya 's pocket money . Natisya felt very uneasy and realised that Natasya had sacriced so much for her . " Why do you do this for me ? " Natisya asked Natasya . Natasya smiled and answered " It ' okay . I know you have problem with your boyfriend , Sofwan . I just want to ease your problem " . Natisya hugged Natasya tightly and it was the moment they befriend like other twins . The meeting room was so cool that Lina could feel her fingers were trembling . There were three gentlemen and ladies , all are waiting eagerly to pose as many questions to Lina . Lina was again nervous she could feel the drumbeat of her heart . Suddenly Dato ' Tajol broke the silence and said , " We thought of hiring you , your academic and curriculum activities suits our requirement but we need to have your commitment , are you willing to work late and travel overseas ? " . Lina promptly answered " Anything you say Dato " Months flew by and Lina was already about 4 months at Mersko Tour and Agency Services . Her relationship with Dato Tajol has been extraordinary . It was no more of an employer and an employee relationship . Lina realize this but she was adamant of continuing this relationship although she knew that Dato Tajol 's son , Ikhwan was also interested in her . It would be foolish for 24 years old pretty lass having an affair with a 55 years old boss . But Lina could not care less . She saw many Malay and Korean dramas potraying such story - lines and in fact many ended with marriage . So Lina was determined to follow suit . She dreamt of having a comfortable house , loving and caring husband and of course with few good children . On Sunday morning at her apartment , an unexpected visitor knocked at her door . Lina refused to open up the door when she saw Ikhwan through the peeping glass of her front entrance door . Ikhwan was furious as Lina was adamant to open the door . Ikhwan left the apartment sinking in his boots . He left a small note at the door . It reads " My dad is too old for you , he has four siblings to take care of . I am your definite choice " . Lina could not believe what she saw and quickly tore the note . She knew Ikhwan would do this to her as he had been trying hard to lure Lina . The 26 years old Ikhwan was no match to her as Lina wanted a more stable and matured man to lead her life . Lina remembered on her first date with Ikhwan when he spoke about ailing mum . Apparently Ikhwan 's mum is a Dutch lady where Dato Tajol met her at London University 27 years ago . She is bed - ridden now after a heart attack a few years ago . Lina stayed whole day indoor . She spent her rest day reading newspaper , magazines and in between she watched cable television . Lina felt asleep on the sofa when suddenly at about midnight she heard a deaf sound . Her guess was right . It was a familiar sound that she heard before - the sound of an alarm from a car parked at the basement . Then somebody knocked her front door entrance . " Your car alarm system is disturbing other people " her neighbor , Fazleen who just finished her shift work returned and told Lina to quickly rushed to basement . " Thank you Fazleen , I 'll go down and check , give me a few minutes " Lina quipped immediately . Lina dashed to the basement and saw a figure was meddling her new Myvi car which Dato Tajol gave to her as a birthday present . Lina was scared to move nearer until suddenly a loud shot was heard . The bullet went through Lina 's head and there Lina was lying motionless . Pool of blood was seen at Lina 's forehead and Lina was still breathing , slowly but she was dying . Soon a crowd gathered and somebody was seen calling an ambulance and a patrol car . There was a figure unknown to the crowd , Ikhwan , he was seen holding a handkerchief weeping quietly and walking away from a crowd . Within minutes the ambulance arrived . Lina was admitted to ICU unit USM Hospital , Kubang Kerian . Her condition was so critical and she was in coma . Dato Tajol was shocked after being told of this tragedy . He suffered a heart attack and later died . assalamualaikum sir rosdi . i am from dinamis tuition centre class 22 , my name is ain atiya azmi from maahad muhammadi perempuan , and i want to try my skills at narrative essay writing . firstly i want to apologize becsuse i know its going to be bad . : ( I am at the park now . The same park that I went about twelve years ago . Nothing changed much over here . A bunch of kids are too engrossed playing with the slides , fighting among themselves on who will go down first . I almost laughed at the image of a scrawny little girl pushing an elderly plump girl on the swing , looking rather exhausted . Children are running all over the playground , their delight shrieks fill my heart with joy and warmth . Deep down , I am green with envy . Being an eighteen years old teenage girl that I am now , I 've never had a such a carefree , smooth childhood . And it is all due to what happened in this park years ago . " Mom , mom , I want to play over there " , I pulled my mom 's long sleeves , ignoring the fact that she was busy talking on the phone . Well , not exactly talking , she was literally yelling on top of her lungs at someone . I didnt really remember who it was . I was six and nothing I cared more than wanting to join kids of my age at the playground . I tugged at her sleeves once again , only to be rewarded by an annoyed stare from my mom 's beautiful chocolate brown eyes before she said , " Honey , go first . I 'll be watching from here okay ? " I leapt in pure joy and excitement . It didnt take long before I got lost in my own happy world , playing the amazing see - saw , the swing , the slide and many more . Being a friendly child I was , I even made a playground friend . I noticed she looked lonely , sitting on the bench at the far side of the park . " Hey , want to play with me ? " , I smiled sweetly . She was blushing and rather shy at first , but I managed to persuade her to join me . Later on , we were on cloud nine and having a whale of time together . She even told me that her name was Sara . I didnt keep track of time when I noticed that the sun was setting on its horizon and the park was nearly empty except for me and Sara . I was sad , knowing that it was time to go as I said goodbye to her . We even made a silly vow to be playground best friends forever . She smiled at me , cute dimples flashing on her cheeks . I quickly ran the length of the field to catch on my mom who was already in the blue Volvo car parked at the main entrance . Apparently , mom was still on the phone . Then , I turned my back to take a last glance at my new friend only when I noticed something extremely terrible and the blood drained from my face . I was speechless . There , I saw with my very own eyes , a figure of a tall muscular man wearing all black , black trousers , black shirt , black glasses and a black cap pulled over covering half of his face . He was edging closer to Sara , saying something nasty . Then only I realised that Sara told me earlier that she came to the park alone as her house was just a stone 's throw away . So that person couldnt be her parent , could he ? The expression on Sara 's face was of pure shock and terror as the muscular man tried to grab her small frail body . Gosh ! , Sara was in deep trouble ! Only God knows who the man could be . A kidnapper , a child molester , a rapist or a killer . I need to help her . Do something ! My inner voice screamed . But I could only stare as I stood rooted at the far edge of the field . I could only stare helplessly as Sara screamed , at high - pitched voice echoing through the emptiness . I just stared hypnotized by the muscular man who placed a handkerchief over Sara 's nose . Again I saw her small body was lifted before two cursed hands which grabbed her back . I was just like a statue when Sara got carried roughly into the back of a van , which then was driven away in the speed of light . I flinched back at the memory . The memory which was the reason I lived my childhood in fear . The memory which changed me from a gregarious and happy - go - lucky person to the reserved and self - conscious kind of girl . My mom noticed this swing in personality but as always , she was too busy to atttend to me . Day by day , the effect of the guilt and the burden of the horrendous secret had a negative effect on me . I became too scared of strangers that I developed a social anxiety disorder . I am now an awkward teenager , with hardly any friends . I am sad and pathetic . I sigh as the children enjoy their time at the park , fully unaware of my intense scrutiny . After twelve years , I 'm not sure whether opening up and telling another soul about this may help . No one would believe this but this is the real truth . I felt so nervous when I walked into the room , it 's the counsellor room , in my school , SMK Gong Dermin . I was in my class engrossed with my English essay when suddenly a student came over to my class . She conveyed the news that the counsellor wanted to see me in his room . Immediately I could recall something was up his sleeve . This was because every student knew that the counsellor is not a kind and approachable teacher . I always told myself that I would be the last to see him if ever I have any problem in the school . His face is not friendly and none of my friends like to confront him . Even with other teachers , he did not smile that often . Everyone knew that when they were called by him , they were absolutely in a hot soup . No excuses and no matter what kind of trouble they had or had done , they have to face the consequences . I was definitely worried because I was not in his good book . I always skipped classes , slept in the class , and frequently not finishing my homework or assignment given by the teachers . So there I was in his room . He wanted to know what my problems were and any good reasons to support my case . Surprisingly he mentioned that he wanted to help me if my case is justified . Since I was in that room , my eyes kept staring at the clock hanging highly on the wall and it was 9 o ' clock in the morning . There were just the two of us in the room which I considered would be full of tense . At first , I was hesitating to open up to him about my problems . Then I build up my courage . I told him , that I was born in a family which basically living from hands to mouth . We were all considered as the very unfortunate group . A group I considered living among the ranks of poor people . I have 9 siblings and me , being the eldest sister must be a role model for my other sisters and brothers . Five of them are still schooling in primary school and the rest are not schooling yet . I am in form five now . I will be having a big exam , SPM , this year , and my daily routines are full of domestic works and ofcourse the school homework and assignments . I often skipped classes after ten in the morning , because I had many domestic works to do at home . I helped my parents selling our hand - made cupcakes . It was a regular routine almost everyday where I had to skip classes and went out of the school through the back gate and nobody would see me from there - not even the security guards . I walked to my house as it was just a stone 's throw away . When I reached home , I quickly help my parent packed our hand - made cupcakes and carry them in my dad 's van . Then we dashed to morning market at Wakaf Che Yeh in Kota Bharu . Although my dad 's van was just a second - hand van and looked like an old scrap , it was a very strong and tough van . The van is considered like an old and experienced soldier who always obeyed my dad 's instruction and it could fit in 1000 hand - made cupcakes plus other relating stuff . When we reached the market , the first thing I did was pitching the tent and immediately put on our cupcakes on display . Our hand - made cupcakes were very popular among the customers and they were quickly sold as fast as the lightning . Sometimes my dad and I did some extra jobs like washing the plates in the restaurant . At times I also served as the waitress . We have to earn whatever extra money when we have the oppurtunities . We reached back home about midnight . We were completely exhausted and went to bed . At 3 o ' clock in the morning , I had to be awaken again to help my mom . We baked about a thousand cupcakes ready for the next morning sales at Wakaf Che Yeh . Eventhough I was dead tired , I tried hard to complete with mum the numerous cupcakes before the clock strikes 7 . I needed to get ready for school otherwise the teacher would be furious if I reached school late . Since our business was doing quite satisfactorily , my parents had thought carefully to open up our very own cupcake bakery . My mom 's cupcakes were tasty and good just like the other well - known cupcake bakeries but the only problem we were facing was the financial problem . That was why we just sold our cupcakes along the street . I did not pay much attention towards my studies because I cared for my siblings more . If we have enough money then , we could afford for my siblings to further their studies . Therefore I have to help my parents to get as much money as possible . That was why I sacrificed mine for them . For almost an hour , I told him my life story and finally I said , " Those are the routine in my everyday life . " My teacher gave a low sigh and told me , " It 's alright Aisyah , why don 't you tell me earlier about all of this ? Maybe I can help you to get some money . We can do a charity sale or run for charity ! I can also ask the headmaster and other teachers to help you . Then you can focus your examination the end of this year . I 'm proud of you Aisyah . " After that , he gave me his big smile that no one ever seen it before except for me on that day . He looked at the wall clock , it showed that it was almost ten , and he said , " Let 's go Aisyah ! I 'll help you and your parents selling the cupcakes . " The counsellor had help me a lot . I did not know how I can ever thank him . In the end , I passed my SPM examination with flying colours . I couldn 't believe my eyes as I was looking at my results . My parents then had their own cupcake bakery called ' Big Family Cupcakes ' . |
Melody had spent the night wondering , well , what if it was cloudy . Hoping for this like she 'd never hoped for anything . Maybe it would make a difference if nobody could see the sun . The law seemed firm about where it had to be . If they didn 't know , maybe they 'd have to wait , if only another day . But when it came to a death sentence , one more day was everything . By the time she 'd awakened this morning , she was ready to admit that it wouldn 't have made any difference . No sun , just clouds - this was something a kid would pin her hopes on , and Melody was no kid . She was fourteen , almost , and maybe she 'd never been one to begin with . She held Jeremy 's little hand snug as they watched the straps come out , feeling him grind the bones in her fingers together , and thought maybe there were no such things as kids at all in this world . " In life , each of us must make room on our back for our brother , for our sister , " Bloomfield was saying . He was a big , stooped man with a big head . He postured like he was reading from a bulky book he held in front of him , but he never seemed to actually look at it . " Carrying one another toward each and every tomorrow is the only way we 'll continue to survive . It 's the only way we ever have . " Here in the center of the village , gathered around the Thieves Pole , they had her father kneel , leaning forward onto his knuckles . Melody supposed it went easier this way , but then , how would she know ? This had never happened as far back as she could remember . Only about once every ten years , her grandmother had told her . That was about how long it took for somebody to forget . Forget the lesson that the entire village was obliged to turn out and watch . Forget what the punishment was like , really like , in the end . Somebody was bound to forget , eventually . She wanted him to look at her , and she didn 't . What if he saw that she wasn 't crying and thought she no longer loved him ? She 'd cried over her dog - she couldn 't cry for him ? Could be she was still too shocked to cry . She 'd never believed it would actually come to this . While her father posed like a tilted table , they draped Tom Harkin 's body over his back , the dead man 's sightless eyes staring at the back of her father 's head , the near - naked corpse 's belly to his spine . The straps they used were designed to not be cut - not easily , anyway - made of rough rawhide that surrounded a core of chains . They looped the first strap over the both of them like a belt that wrapped around and around and around , then padlocked it to itself . There were more straps that crisscrossed at the shoulder , others that cinched the living and the dead arm - to - arm and thigh - to - thigh . Tom Harkin 's chin draped over her father 's right shoulder , like a friend whispering something in his ear . His arms trailed down along her father 's side , and when her father struggled up to his feet again , the dead man 's legs dangled in back , ready to kick him every step along the way . " If a man robs his brother of all his tomorrows , then that man 's own tomorrows shall be spent carrying his brother in death as he failed to do in life . " Bloomfield snapped the book closed and looked at the ground as if he wanted to water it with tears . Melody knew he wouldn 't , not ever . He composed himself and gave her father the stern face again . " Have you got anything to say , Grady ? " She watched her father adjust to the weight . He had to lean forward to keep himself balanced , like someone with a heavy backpack . A load he could never take off . If it came off at all , it would be because it fell apart , piece by piece , and that could take a long time . " I don 't guess ' I 'm sorry ' does any good now , does it ? " her father said loudly , looking ten years older in just two days . The bones of his face jutted sharply over his thin beard . His eyes were a pair of darkened hollows as he sought out Jenna Harkin , who mirrored him , looking more like his daughter in this moment than Melody figured she herself did . " But sorry I am . Sorry I took your father from you . Sorry I can 't make amends for that in a way that would do you any good . Sorry that what I 've done has left you to the mercies of these degenerate sons of bitches standing around looking - " As long as a man didn 't go too far too fast , he could get away with a lot with a girl who didn 't have a father around to protect her , no matter how she felt about his attentions . It was the way of things . Not with everybody , not even with most , but there were enough men who felt that way that it mattered , because there was strength in numbers and nobody wanted to give them cause to leave the village . Or worse , turn against it . As long as they didn 't draw blood and kept things mostly out of sight , it was best to let them have their way . People were content to pretend it wasn 't happening . " I 'm sorry myself , Grady , " and for the moment Bloomfield wasn 't the leader of the village council anymore , just her father 's friend . " Nobody could say you didn 't have a reason . But that doesn 't change the law . " Could she and Jenna even still be friends , though ? How could you manage to stay friends with the girl whose father had killed your dog for the meat ? Jenna may have even eaten some herself , if she hadn 't known it was Patches . And how could she stay friends with you when your father had gone after hers with a chunk of firewood , maybe not meaning what happened next , but still , Tom Harkin was just as dead . How could the two of you go on like before , as if none of this had happened ? Now , finally , her father looked at her , Jeremy too , back and forth , up and down , and now she was glad she wasn 't crying . That would only make it worse , sending him out the gate with her tears on his conscience . She wanted him to see her tall , even though she wasn 't . Wanted him to see her brave , even if she wasn 't that either . The rest he had to know already . " It 's not necessarily a death sentence , you know , " said the man who 'd eased up to her other side as soon as her father 's back was turned , opposite her baby brother , as though Jeremy didn 't count . Hunsicker , that was his name . He always stood like he was in a saddle , and had the littlest eyes she 'd ever seen . The girls had a joke about him : he calls you " hon " and you just feel sicker . " Yeah ? " By now Jeremy was peering around from her other side , red faced and snuffle nosed and ready to grab on to anything that smelled like hope . She let his hand go and wrapped her arm around his head and pulled him against her and trusted she 'd covered his ears . " Were they anybody you knew ? You sat down and talked to them after they got to come back ? " Melody ran for the wall , dragging Jeremy at her side . He stumbled along to keep up , blind with tears and the back of his free hand smearing everything across his face . When she got to the north wall watchtower , the one her grandfather manned , she told Jeremy to stay at the bottom and not move , then she raced up the steps made of logs shaved flat , up and around again , like a square spiral , until she stood at the top platform , looking down on the fields and forests , and her father trudging resolutely in between . The way her grandfather remembered , it had begun in the years after the Day the Sun Roared , and the World Ago shut down . Nothing ran anymore , he said . Three generations later you could still see the wooden crosses along the roads , at least the ones that hadn 't fallen down , many of them now green with plants that liked to climb , and some of them still dangling thick cables , like dead snakes . " Power lines , " he called them , and they 'd fed just about everything . Except one day they stopped working . Everything that ran on them stopped working too . Even everything that didn 't feed off the lines but ran the same way , like the cars , all that stopped working too . " Fried , " they called it . Everything had fried . All because the sun had had an angry day . But coming right out and killing the killer ? Nobody had the stomach for it , to be the one to wield the gun or knife or noose . It wasn 't like killing a deer , or putting down a crippled horse . Nobody was going to eat a murderer . It hadn 't come to that . Melody wondered who 'd been the one to think up a punishment like the Rot . Who could 've been that cruel , that wise ? Someone had realized it didn 't matter if nomads had no jails , not when the killer had made his own , a prison he could carry with him . She was determined to visit him in the early days of it , as often as she could . Family was allowed , and somebody had to take food out anyway , although the guards at the gate would always search her first , to make sure she wasn 't carrying any tools capable of cutting through leather and chains . Which stopped making sense to her almost as soon as it started . She wouldn 't need to sneak a tool out with her , just toss it over the wall somewhere private and fetch it later . Still , if they were to find Tom Harkin cut free and rotting all by himself , they would know who 'd helped , and she 'd be even more of an outcast than her father was now , because the banishing would be permanent . She 'd have no home here anymore , so the two of them would have to run off , and the world wasn 't a safe place for a man alone with an almost fourteen - year - old daughter . He 'd never allow it . Never condemn Jeremy to that kind of life either , or to never seeing his big sister again . She got used to it soon enough , the sight of Tom Harkin strapped to his back , pale here , purple there , blotchy everywhere else . His corpse wore dirty undershorts and nothing else , which somehow seemed more undignified than buck naked . Flies buzzed around the pair of red , crusty - dry , chewed - up - looking wounds on his skull . By her second visit , though , there seemed to be more of him than before , and his arms and legs seemed to jut where before they 'd only dangled . " Because he 's swelling up . It 's the gasses inside him , " her father said . His hair was lank and greasy , and he kept pushing it behind his ears . " You 've seen dead animals puffed up out here in the woods , you know it happens . " She looked him over , Tom Harkin like a giant , stretched - out waterskin grafted to her father 's back . He still didn 't smell so bad that she minded it , but then , it was October , which might have seemed like a blessing , the cool days and chilly nights helping to preserve the body . But everybody she 'd talked to had concluded that this was just a subtler form of punishment . It made the ordeal last longer . Better , some thought , to have this happen at the height of summer , and get it over with quicker . He looked her in the eye a moment , and immediately she knew , no , it wasn 't that easy . Nothing about this was that easy . " You shouldn 't hear about this . " " I 'm going to have to poke him soon . Through the side of the belly . I 've just been trying to work up nerve to do it . " " No , don 't get yourself mixed up in my troubles any more than you already are . " He turned , a cumbersome move , and pointed deeper into the woods . " I found a tree that fell not long ago , trunk still green , all split apart . There 's a long , jagged shank sticking out level with the ground , and I worked on it with a rock to sharpen it up more . That should do . " She nodded , solemn . That 's when the ugly part of all this would truly begin . That 's when Tom Harkin would start turning inside out . That 's when the Rot would really take hold . " You stay clear of him , promise me . " Her father looked like he could boil water just by staring at it . " Him and any of that trash he hangs out with . Anything he thinks he 's got to say to you , you tell him to come out and find me and say it to this ugly head looking over my shoulder , and we 'll see how it goes from there . " " I promise , okay ? I promise . Anyway , what he said , about it not having to be a death sentence , I didn 't believe it at first . But then I got to talking to Miles McGee . You know how he is about books . He 's worse than me , even . " Miles McGee was a year older than she was , and most of his life had been the closest thing she had to a big brother , although now he was starting to look at her differently . Which she liked and didn 't like , at the same time . Wanting things to stay the way they were , knowing nothing ever did . " Miles has this book he says came from that sheriff building some of them explored a couple years ago . Not a book , exactly , but a manual ? I guess they had to keep it handy after the Day the Sun Roared . It 's about how to deal with a bunch of dead people after a disaster . It says you don 't have to hurry up and bury everybody in a big grave , because dead bodies don 't actually spread disease . People think they do , but they don 't . " It was the one thing that genuinely felt like betting their hopes on , and Melody watched her father 's face to see how he reacted . If this news was as amazing as it sounded . For a while he just watched a beetle trundling across the forest floor , slow slow slow , like it wasn 't going to get wherever it had to be before winter came on . " This is different , " he finally said . " No matter how careful you try to move with something like this on you . . . these straps , they rub you raw . Right through the shirt , they rub you raw . It makes it easy for an infection to get started . Do you get what I 'm saying ? " " It means don 't get your hopes up . It means every time you come out here , we 've got to treat it like it 's the last . Because there 's probably going to come a day when you 're going to stand at the edge of these woods and call for me and I 'm not going to answer . Maybe it 's because I can 't . Or I don 't want you to see what it 's come to . Or it 's because while I still could , I went too deep into the woods to hear you . You 've got to be ready for that , do you understand ? " He seemed at peace now , resigned to whatever might happen , and in these moments when it was quiet , she would listen and wonder what her father heard in the night . If anything . Maybe he was too old to hear it , or not yet old enough . Maybe she was too , even at not quite fourteen . But there were those who said the woods whispered , or something inside them did , something that only the very young or the very old seemed able to hear . " Just like I want you back . And if I can 't have Patches , I 'll settle for you . " She stopped and , in spite of everything , had to laugh , because so did he . " That didn 't come out right . " When it was time to go , she wasn 't ready to give up the woods yet , because she wanted her own time to pause and listen . She took the long way home , keeping inside the trees deep enough that she couldn 't see the back wall of the village , still plenty of leaves on the limbs in the way . They no longer blazed with the colors she loved best , though . All the reds and oranges and yellows were muted now , and dull . Even the woods felt like they were dying . There were the in - between times , too . In between visits , between sleep , between chores , between distractions . That was when Miles McGee found her on the third day , which was just like him - more often than not , he knew right when to show up . He caught her after her turn cleaning out the poultry houses , when she was amenable to most anything that would stall her from going back to what she vowed would only be a temporary home . Which wasn 't all that different from the coops , either , because her grandmother could cluck as bad as the hens . She looked it over . " I think it 's another one of those music - player things . " It said iPod on the back , on the metal , and she had two of these already , although none of them looked exactly the same . " It 's been two weeks since the last scavenge - where 'd you get it ? " " Found it while I was picking corn this morning in the outer field . My guess is one of the raggedy men dropped it while he was stealing a few ears in the night . " Miles spared a contemptuous glance west , in the direction of the cornfield , and beyond it , the raggedies . " Or maybe it was his idea of a trade . " Everyone hated the raggedies , and Melody supposed she did too , but sometimes she felt she ought to think better of them , because after all , her own family and everybody else here had come from people who were once more like them than not . They must 've been raggedy too , at one point . They 'd just had the good sense to stop here and dig in and call it home . Strange , though , to think that one of them out there could be so like her now , if this contraption in her hand was any indication . He had to have carried it around in spite of everyone else thinking it was useless junk . Maybe it gave him hope . She thanked him and had to strain to look him in the eye . He was either too tall for his hips or too skinny for his height , one or the other , and crowned by a mop of curly hair she would 've given anything , except family , to have on her own head . He knew it , too . Maybe sprouting from her children would be almost as good , and that was what he was counting on . The village scavenged once a month or so , volunteers taking to horseback and bringing home whatever they could of the World Ago that could still be of use after all this time . Some liked these trips for the excitement of discovery , others for the chance to get away and see something different . Some , like Miles , wanted to keep going ; others saw enough to satisfy them for the rest of their lives . They plotted their destinations from an old map of what used to be the state the land was once part of . Where they 'd scavenged already was like a growing ring around the village , and Melody found it sad to think that there would come a time when they ran out of places to go . What was left would be too distant , keep them away for too many days at a time . There would come a point when they 'd picked it all clean , like crows on carrion , leaving nothing but bones . What drove them out time and again was the belief that you could never have too many farm tools , or too many jars and plates . Sometimes , if it had been stored well , even clothing had survived the decades . This was all fine , but what had captured her imagination were the tools that were of no use to anyone , not since the Day the Sun Roared , because these were the ones it had fried . By now she had watches that had no way of winding them . Things that played music from your pocket , windows that played pictures in your hand . Thick wands that people used to point at contraptions across the room , and control them . She had a few of the phones they used for talking with people no matter how far away they were , and a couple of the flat slabs that had been called computers and apparently did so much that they ran the world . Until they 'd fried . Sometimes she took the devices apart and couldn 't get them back together again . Other times she cleaned them up , inside and out , so good they looked new , and you 'd almost expect one to turn on by itself if you just stared at it hard enough . Except they didn 't have batteries , so she hunted down how to make her own , with small jars and strips of copper and nails and some of the cider vinegar they made from apples . She 'd open up some of the gadgets and run wires from the battery to different spots inside them , and a few times coaxed a pale flicker of light across the screens of a couple of them , and once a burst of numbers , but nothing more , although it gave her hope . Melody told her , and showed her a few of the other gadgets that seemed to have promise . And wondered for the hundredth time why she and Jeremy had had to come here ; why their grandmother couldn 't have packed a bag and stayed with them in their own home . It was like ordering them to surrender all hope from the very beginning . Her grandmother frowned at the ancient iPod , looking not nearly as indulgent as her father usually did . Her lips seemed to disappear . " Foolishness . You 'll never get any of that working . It 's just old junk not worth the bother of carrying around . " Melody pointed at a switch on the wall that didn 't do anything and never had . " Wouldn 't it be nice to have lights like they had in the books ? You just jiggle that thing and there it is ? You wouldn 't like that ? " Her grandmother made a sour - apple face . " What could a light like that show me that a good candle or lantern doesn 't already ? There 's nothing there that 's any different . " She shook her head no , a thousand times no , then jabbed a finger at the old dead iPod . " You just leave that alone , if you know what 's good for you . That junk there , that 's how it all starts . " " You don 't remember the things your grandfather and I do , from when we were little , before the sun set everything right again . You can 't remember , because you weren 't there . So don 't tell me you want to go back to a world you never even belonged to . It was a sick and decadent world back there , and I 'm amazed the sun let it go on as long as it did . But it 's over now , and there 's no need to insult the sun by trying to bring all that back . " She flustered along as if asking where she could possibly begin . " If I was to get started on that , we 'd be at it all day , and I still don 't think I could get it across to you in a way you 'd accept . Not when your mind 's already made up that there was something better about it . " And you weren 't , Melody decided . You don 't really remember anything at all . You only pretend to because you never want anything to change . This made sense , once she thought it through . She didn 't know by how many years , exactly , but her grandmother was a few younger than her grandfather . And he was barely able to remember the World Ago . " The mouth on you , " her grandmother said with a huff and a sigh , but , too , she was grinning a little , until she wasn 't . " Just you watch yourself , playing around with that old junk . Be careful who sees you do it . Most people around here are happy with things the way they are . They won 't want to see the likes of you getting out of hand and forgetting your place . " " My place ? What is my place ? " It was worth asking , even if she couldn 't imagine any answer that wouldn 't dismay her , and possibly horrify her . She planned to join her grandfather on the northern watchtower that night , and thought she 'd do it alone , except she 'd only crept six steps from her bed when Jeremy roused and demanded to know where she was going . This was something new , this refusal of his to sleep unless she was nearby . She couldn 't even sneak away once he was down . It was as if he had a field around him that just knew . " Many a time . They just scatter . They 're gone before you ever get there . And then , before long , they 're back again . " " Why not just kill them ? It doesn 't seem like it 'd be hard to pick them off with a rifle . They 're not us . " " From the woods , you mean ? " He sounded perplexed . " No , they don 't seem to creep around that direction , not that anyone 's ever noticed . " He turned to her , and she imagined his eyes had gone narrow , the way they did when there was more to say and they both knew it . " Anything covers a lot , sweet pea . What are you getting at ? " She told him about the whispers in the woods that seemed only for the ears of the very young and the old . He had to have heard about it , at least . A thing like that couldn 't have just been a story kids told each other . If there actually were such a thing as kids anymore . " I don 't feel old . " He stared east , into the black of the forest night . " Maybe because my ears are pretty good too , same as my eyes . Yeah , you can hear things from out there and not always know what they are . Now , you get a fox squabbling with a raccoon , you know what that is . But other things ? They 're not so clear and maybe they do sound like words sometimes . " " That part of the world , we used to think we were its masters . Maybe we were , maybe we weren 't , but now we for sure aren 't . All we can do is build a wall around a bunch of houses and trailers and one of our fields , and hope that too much of the rest doesn 't creep in , and stays out there with your raggedy men . And as for what we are to it all now . . . I couldn 't even begin to guess . " Now she started to reconsider . Maybe she didn 't like the sound of this after all . She 'd spent most of her years thinking that her father knew everything there was that was important enough to know , but he hadn 't even known enough to not forget about not killing . And if her grandfather didn 't either , the world seemed like a bigger place , darker and more unknowable than it had seemed already . " There was a girl I once knew , " he went on . " This was before I took up with your grandmother , so it really was way back . Tara . . . that was her name . She was another one like me , just old enough to remember what it was like before the Day the Sun Roared . So she knew what things were like before , enough to compare . She had herself some strange ideas . " He 'd loved her - Melody could hear it in his voice , every word . By now she remembered less and less about her mother , who 'd died bringing Jeremy into the world , mostly fading moments , and she always wished she could remember more about the kind of woman who would 've named her daughter Melody . And now , from the tone of her grandfather 's voice , she wished she could 've known this Tara woman too . He took some time to prepare himself for this one . Finally , " She was okay as long as we were roaming . But once this place started coming together . . . " He pointed into the darkness . " She said it called to her . That spot over there at the edge of the north field , where you 've been going in to meet with your dad ? She went in about there . Never came out again . " He seemed to have forgotten his arm was still pointing , hanging in the air until he remembered to put it down again . " Not a week goes by that I don 't expect her to step out again , same as she was then , like nothing 's changed . " He seemed to not want to say anything for a while , so she shared the silence with him , and soothed Jeremy when he needed it . They watched the night beneath the moon and the river of stars , the night in all its shades of darkness , and she 'd never known there were so many . But then , she 'd never watched like this before . It was a light , dim , and where it came from , she didn 't know , but it lingered and grew until it seemed as bright as a lantern , only colder , a cold and fuzzy light . It bobbed along for a bit before she noticed a few others scattered across the horizon , and then the first one sank beyond sight amid the trees . They roved like fireflies in the summer meadows until , one by one , they too drifted out of sight . Tears , she thought after staring at them for a time . That was what they were . Tears of light , falling against the endless void of darkness , with no telling who or what was capable of shedding them . Soon came the day that when she saw her father , it was so much worse than the time before , she was surprised he was still letting her see him at all . It wasn 't a man on his back anymore . It was past that , past time for thinking of Tom Harkin as a man , even a dead man . He was just a thing now , a putrid thing that hung in and out of his skin and fouled the air around him , along with every part of her father that he touched and smeared and leaked on . Seeing him now , it was the first time she had a truly bad feeling about all this since the start of it , and she 'd accepted not just what was happening , but the chance for hope . Hope , on its own , didn 't have to smell what she was smelling . She inched closer to where her father was half lying , half squatting before a tree , then realized with a jolt that he 'd been using the tree to rub against , like a bear with an itchy back , grinding Tom Harkin away a layer at a time . " Daddy . . . ? " She reached out to touch his cheek , and it felt as hot as the iron griddle on the wood stove . " Are you going to be okay a little longer ? " He shut his eyes . A thick tear pearled in one corner . " An animal was eating on him last night . I don 't know what . Nothing very big , but I could feel it tugging pretty hard . I couldn 't move . All I could think of was . . . was how was it going to know where Tom ends and I begin . " " I 'm not even sure myself anymore . " Her father 's voice started to break too . " He talks to me now . I know he can 't . I know that . But that doesn 't shut him up . " " I don 't have the heart to tell you , " he said , but she must 've glared at him severely enough for bringing it up in the first place that he relented . " He says he 'll see me soon . He says we 'll be roaming these woods forever , him and me . " Melody scowled at the ghastly head bobbling over her father 's shoulder , its eyes a couple of milky - looking plums and its rotten - breathed mouth open like a cross between a landed fish and a drooling idiot . Would it be cheating if she went back for a knife and cut the head from its neck ? Maybe that would quiet him down to her father 's content . Maybe give Daddy something to do , too , like find a hole and throw the ignorant head into it , along with its hateful ideas . " Tell him . . . " her father said , then drifted off , all puffy red eyes and skin like sweating cheese . " Tell him I 've gone to go find your mom , and it 's got to be one or the other . Tell him there 's no going back and forth . " She 'd walked and she 'd walked , shifting the heavy sack from one arm to the other , and her feet had crunched so many brittle leaves that she no longer heard them , and now , finally , it felt right to stop . It just did . She had to trust that . Women knew things , knew them without knowing quite how - they just did . Which scared the men sometimes , some of them , so that had to be a good thing . They looked at her like she was a woman now , and that part of it didn 't feel so good , but maybe the time had come to own it anyway , if it meant she would know things too . It was a stump she 'd found , all on her own , as big around as a barrel and leveled across the top from some ancient meeting with a saw . Long enough ago for the wood to look soft and welcoming , with scabs of lichen and a beard of green moss . It was a table now , one more example of the new rising up from the death of the old . Melody opened her sack and pulled out the first thing to fill her hand , a phone that hadn 't carried a voice for decades , and she set it in the middle of the stump . She groped in the bag for the one thing that , more than any other , made it so heavy , and came out with a rock the size of a flattened potato . At first she 'd thought to use a brick for this , but no , what if they didn 't like that - the square edges of it , the man - madeness of it . The stone was rounded and smooth , as only a river could leave it . They would know what it was . " These mean something to me ! But I figure you 'd be just as happy if they never work again . The way my grandpa talks , every one of them was like another link in the chains that held you down . " " Maybe that 's true and maybe it isn 't , but either way , they still mean a lot to me . " Her chest was hitching with the refusal to cry at the surrender of it all . " But I 'm giving them to you . If it 's your world now , then maybe you 'll like them this way better . There 's still one thing I love more than these , and what they mean , and I don 't want to have to give my father up . I don 't want to see him follow that asshole Tom Harkin into the earth too . Not if there 's the least chance . " " All you 've got to do is spare my daddy from the Rot , " she begged whatever might have paused to hear . " Because he 's got to protect me . I need him between me and those other men , and he 's all I 've got that can do it . All you 've got to do is help him keep well enough to live through this . The . . . the microbes in him , they 're more a part of your world than ours . Tell them to leave him alone . They 'll listen . They have to listen . . . " It had never seemed any clearer than it did now : the people and the forces that meant to destroy would always win , always come out on top over the ones that wanted to build . The world and everything in it was just geared that way , made to fail , made to fall . The most you could do was draw your line in the dirt and hunker down behind it and keep the worst on the other side of the line where it belonged , and try your best to stop it from crossing over for one more day . She smashed until her sack was empty and there was nothing left , then she took handfuls of pieces that were still on the stump and threw them into the air and let them fall where they may . Then she sat down in the middle of them and screamed until her lungs ached , and shucked her sweater to go bare armed , and used a piece of the rubble to scratch at her skin because she remembered a story about some man that God was tormenting who sat around scraping himself with a chunk of broken pottery . It had turned out all right for him in the end . Do a thing like that , and they had to know you were sincere . And when , at last , she heard the footsteps , she thought there it was , the bear , right on cue . . . but on second thought it seemed like any bear worth his teeth would either be a lot louder or a lot quieter . You 'd hear him coming a mile away or never hear him at all . These were just footsteps , and not even quite right . More like the idea of footsteps that someone was putting in her mind . Melody peered up at her from the forest floor , afraid to blink . There was something about the woman , if a woman this truly was , that wasn 't wholly there , yet was more there than just there . Like stained glass , Melody decided after a few moments . She 'd been in a church before , on the scavenging trips , a real church from the World Ago . It had been a sunny day , and she 'd never seen such brilliant colors in her life . Saints and shepherds , green grass and blue skies , even the reddest fires of Hell , lit by the shining sun . . . yet she knew one flung rock could put an end to any of them . But no , that wasn 't possible . How long had it been since her grandfather had watched his one true love walk into the woods and never come out again ? That woman , she would 've been young then , not much older than Melody was now . This woman , while she wasn 't as young as all that , wasn 't old , either . " No , that couldn 't be , " Melody said . Still , the way her grandfather had spoken of Tara had made her seem so familiar . " That just . . . No . " It cut the tongue right out of her , as Melody sat up and scooted back to lean against the stump . Trying to make sense of everything that couldn 't be , but was . You hoped . You hoped for things , and pretended they might be within reach , and when they didn 't answer you could console yourself that , well , you 'd tried . This Tara , she was neither young nor old . She was just right . Like she 'd grown into what was , for her , perfection , then decided to stay there . Her hair was red , the color of rhubarb , and nearly to her waist , thick as summer wheat . Her eyes , green . Clover would want to be that shade of green , if it only knew . There was no hiding the state of her arms , and her grandmother made a fuss when she saw them . Without even having to think about it , Melody spun a lie of gravity and thorns . Grandmothers were always ready to believe the worst about clumsy girls . Jeremy , though , knew better . He might still believe the part about the thorns , but he looked at her as if he knew , absolutely knew , that something of huge importance had happened , and that he wanted her back the way she used to be . " Sure . He 's built himself a nice shelter . " Then she hugged him and held tight and kissed him on top of the head . " He said to give you that . " Inside , where she wouldn 't have to contend with the sight of Jenna Harkin , and how there seemed so much less of her now . So much less life , less hope , so much less left to look forward to in each and every tomorrow . So much less love between them . Fact was , she 'd have to say Jenna probably hated her now , for her father 's crime , or would have hated her if she 'd had that much fight left . Her eyes were downcast and resigned , staring at the ground as if she spent too many hours thinking of the day she 'd be under it . Jenna was going dead a little at a time , whittled down to hips that moved on command and a mouth that told whatever lies it had to , when it wasn 't otherwise occupied , and the rest of her just not there anymore . Wherever Melody had to go , she tried to walk lightly , with no shows of pride or promise . She walked as if there was even less to her than there was to begin with . She walked as if she had no breasts , small as they were . Walked as if she had no hips . She walked pretending that she didn 't reflect the light of the sun at all , invisible , just a dark , sexless smudge drifting across the ground . " How 's he getting along out there by his lonesome ? " Hunsicker asked her one afternoon , ten paces from the chicken coops , and she 'd never seen him coming . He sounded like the happiest man on earth . She stood her ground , though . He 'd enjoy it all the more if he could get her backing away , just so he could keep dogging her . " He 's getting by , and he says anything you 've got to say to me , you can run it past him first . " When Hunsicker smiled , his tiny eyes twinkled . He 'd not shaved in days , and the brown stubble looked coarse enough to grate nutmeg . If she 'd let herself , she would 've shuddered at the thought of the feel of it . " Then maybe we 'll have us a parley , him and me . While there 's still time . " He looked her top to bottom , seeing everything , everything . " How much do you weigh , little sister ? " " Because you don 't look like you 'd weigh much more than a full feed bag . Such a bitty thing , someone could hang you up here off his shoulders and hardly know you were there at all . " He peered down his nose and gave two sharp sniffs . " Except for the smell . " She wasn 't sure when they crossed it , but knew that at some point they 'd taken a step that marked the farthest away from home Jeremy had ever strayed . He 'd never been a - scavenging , only looked impatiently forward to the day when he would . He was on the adventure of his life now , and she couldn 't even tell him . She led him by the hand the whole time , and he consented to it without a single complaint , not like him at all . But she knew why . It was a big world getting bigger all the time . There 'd been a lot of walking since they 'd heard the last faint sounds of the village behind them . To his eyes , she was sure , the trees looked taller , and the sky - eating clouds looked angrier , and the streams looked swifter , and the leaves underfoot crunched louder , with menace , calling out for bears and packs of feral dogs . " Because we 're not just visiting him , silly . We 're going away with him . He 's cut Tom Harkin off himself , so now we 're going to make a new home , just the three of us . " " Then why didn 't you tell me ? " he bawled . " I would 've brought some shirts . And I 'm not even wearing my favorite pants . Or my digger ! I 'll need my digger ! " " Now think , " she told him . " If anyone had seen you dragging that much stuff along , they would 've known something was going on . " He balked , unable to walk and fret at the same time , so she yanked to keep him moving . " Dad 'll make you a new digger . And you can get pants anywhere . " He would hate her forever , she feared . For everything , but most of all for the lies . Every last thing he was hearing from her , just one lie after another . He complained that he wanted them to face the same direction , complained because complaining was his job , it seemed , so she told him that this way they got to see twice as much . Nobody could sneak up on them , and they had each other 's backs . All lies , even the twice - as - much part , because it was all she could do to slump there and stare at the forest floor . She couldn 't even keep her head up , fighting against the weight of her decision . How would they know , she wondered . How would they even know to come and collect their due ? Did they have eyes everywhere , among the birds and snakes and fast - footed hares ? Or were they listeners , instead , zeroing in on Jeremy as he chattered about what their new home might be like or the unrelieved pounding of her heart ? " No , " she said , so he wouldn 't turn around . It was an easy word to say , no matter how much your throat was clenching . Then , when she could , " Maybe a little . " But they would be nice to him . Of course they would . There was a reason for this , the way there was a reason for everything . Tara , she was still fine , whatever she was now . . . and that was it , maybe . She 'd never had a son of her own , and now she wanted one , although not just any boy would do . She could only be happy with a boy descended from the only mortal man she 'd ever loved . " Hey , " he said . She felt him straighten against her back . " I see someone moving . It 's got to be him , right ? Got to be Dad . " " Probably . " She clenched her teeth to make the rest of her mouth work . " But he 's been sick , remember . He may not look himself . " " There 's more than one . They don 't look like anybody I 've ever seen . " Jeremy made a sound he 'd never made before and began to squirm . His bony little shoulder dug into her back as he twisted around . " You 're not even looking ! " Okay , so they could still make some noise after all . They could still grunt . " You 're not looking , you 're not looking ! " he cried , all accusations now , and he whirled on the stump , practically on top of her back , throwing both arms around her shoulders and burying his face against her neck , his breath scorching . " You 've got to go with them . You just do . " Her voice was barely there . " They 'll take you to where Dad is , and I have to stay here . " But he knew , knew something was wrong but couldn 't understand what . Or why . At least Patches never wondered why , and this made it ten times worse . She kept her head down so she wouldn 't see any of it happen , then squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn 't see the shadows . But she felt them , whatever they were , a presence , a pressure like waves of heat and hunger , as they gathered on either side of the stump , and while her brother squealed , they gently , very gently , peeled his arms free of her and lifted him away , and he was gone , the weight of him , the wet of him , just gone . She wasn 't going to move , not as long as Jeremy was crying , not even to cover her ears , and he cried for a long time . The sound receded behind her as slow as ice melted , faint fainter faintest , his each and every wail yanking at her heart , ever more violently the farther away it got , until even the echo of him was gone , fading like a last wisp of smoke that dissipated among the trees . But at least it never cut off abruptly , and she supposed that this , too , was a good sign . There was no body to find , but what other conclusion was she supposed to draw ? She could take a hint . She was a woman now , and women knew things . She could feel it as surely as the coming winter : that hole in the world , in the shape of her father , turned permanent . He was never coming back to refill it . The tally of loss was getting worse all the time : down one dog , one father , one little brother , and one big bag of stupid gadgets that she 'd never have gotten to work again anyway . Women knew things , all right . Everything except how to realize they were being lied to when it mattered most . She tried to locate her father anyway and roved among his campsites . She found his blanket covered with fallen leaves , wrinkled her nose at the rotting residue of Tom Harkin scraped onto trees and logs . Found the last two platefuls of food , eaten , but so messily she couldn 't imagine they 'd been eaten by anything human . Found , finally , the thing that convinced her he must be dead , because he would never have left it behind : a square of paper folded and unfolded ten thousand times before being nailed to one of the trees with a thorn . A pencil drawing of her and Jeremy , just their faces , younger by two or three summers , his beneath hers and her hair sweeping down around him like protective arms . She 'd forgotten her father had drawn it . Forgotten he even could . She felt worst of all for her grandfather . He never wanted to leave his post on the wall at all now . Little runaway boys had to come home sometime . She watched them from the windows and locked doors of the trailer where she no longer lived , where nobody lived anymore , a home that had fed its people one by one to the ground and the woods until she was the last one left , and if the men had their way , she probably wouldn 't be long in following . One way or another . She watched them go about their days , rough and unshaven , their hands like tree bark and cruelty in their laughter . They breathed with the arrogance of men who knew exactly how much they could get away with . They celebrated it in every step . She found Miles McGee before any of the rest of them had a chance to split her apart from the herd . Miles was still a year older than she was , and still most of his life the closest thing she had to a big brother , and still starting to look at her differently . Which she was now glad of , finally liking it more than not , because what choice did she have ? Nothing was more futile than wanting things to stay the same when you knew nothing ever did . At her side , Miles turtled his head from beneath the covers and propped himself back on his elbows and peered around in the gloom . " Were you having a bad dream ? Was that you mak - " " Shush yourself . " She popped a fingertip to his lips like she 'd been doing it all her life , as she heard the hubbub of the village coming awake around them , jumpy and panicked and full of fraying nerves . " You think we should . . . ? " The trailer 's bedroom had only one . She flicked her gaze toward it and tried to put it together , something sensible out of the pieces that , on their own , may have been familiar , but not like this . Her breath locked in her throat when she saw the face tilt to one side , its ragged beard scraping the glass like wire bristles . Hands were clutching the window , four of them , one high on each side and two more below . Pinpoints of moonlight glinted as it blinked . She followed where its baleful gaze seemed directed , not at her but at her side . Miles . It was looking at Miles . The shadows on its face deepened as it scowled and its brow furrowed with wrath , and then there was a grimace full of teeth , twice as many teeth as she 'd ever seen in even the broadest smile , and the nails of one hand screeched along the glass . The hand withdrew and she was sure it turned into a fist then , and she knew what was going to happen next . Because women knew the worst kinds of things . Before it could go any farther , she threw both arms around Miles , pulling him tight to what on any other girl might have been called a bosom . No , she said to the window , a word without sound , a silent word and pleading eyes . No . It 's not like that . Don 't . After a moment the oversized face relaxed , the shadows lightening and the grimace disappearing and the eyes content to stare . It pressed a hand to the glass , then all of it was gone , the face rising up and away , rising , and that was the most impossible thing of all , because the window was , what , seven feet off the ground . Which meant that this visitor was stooping . You could never throw on clothes fast enough when you really needed to . Melody made do with as little as she could get away with and let a blanket cover the rest . Then she was out the door , the frosty ground cold on the soles of her feet , sprinting around behind the trailer and finding nothing , hearing only the crash of hurried footsteps . She followed the ruckus of them to a lonely eastern stretch of the wall , got there only in time to see something slipping over the top , a leg , one freakishly long leg , there , then gone . With a gliding sense of disbelief , she walked around and around the Thieves Pole , Miles at her side , no trouble keeping up , because most of her energy went to trying to comprehend . Just trying to fathom the sight . She had trouble enough keeping her jaw closed . It was all a blood - slick tangle of arms and legs , some clothed , some bare , others so soaked and mangled she honestly couldn 't tell . She found it impossible to discern how many there were until she counted the heads jutting from the stack in different places . Seven . Seven men , skewered one by one over the Thieves Pole , like fish that had been speared and left to accumulate along the shaft . I guess you 've got your limits after all , she told them from her heart 's deepest chamber . And if you 've got a problem with this , you already know what to do . Just turn your heads and pretend you don 't see a thing . You 're so good at it . The only ones whose faces were harder to read were young and female , girls like her . At some point in her orbit around the Thieves Pole , Miles dogging her steps , she found herself next to Jenna Harkin , huddling inside a worn , old parka that had lost half its goose down . Melody stopped , finally , and their shoulders knocked , and Melody wiggled her fingers at her side until Jenna clasped her hand . " It 's right they 're there , " Jenna said , just loud enough for Melody to hear , and no one else . " They were thieves too . Same as anybody who took something while another person 's back was turned . " Along the northern stretch of wall , she climbed the steps to the watchtower where her grandfather sat waiting . She didn 't come without guilt , tons of it , because she 'd caused him more grief lately than a grandfather should have to bear . But she couldn 't think about that now . He smiled at her and fed a few hunks of wood into the stove and held his hands to the crackles and sparks before leaving the iron door open . A fire was nice to watch sometimes . " The mind plays tricks sometimes . Makes you think you see a thing that just can 't be . So you have to write it off . You start raising the alarm about every little thing like that , people think you 've gone soft in the head . " She was sorry she 'd ever doubted . Sorry , too , for the price she 'd paid , but maybe there was a plan in that , as well . So for now her greatest hope was that someday Jeremy , whatever he was to become in this world , would thank her for doing him the greatest favor of his life . But it would be a long , unsettled wait until she knew . This world . . . For the first time she realized she 'd spent so much time mourning a world that had ended ages ago , hoping to resurrect it , that she 'd never paid attention to what it was becoming . Or returning to again , now that it was unfettered . Where were the centaurs , she might have asked instead . Where were the gorgons , the furies , the giants and the gods ? " You finally saw her down there , didn 't you ? " Melody said . " Right ? That 's why you didn 't ring the bell ? Because you knew if Tara was the one bringing something like that , it had to be for a good reason . " It was a tempting thought , and sent her pacing about the watchtower 's platform for many moments , until she stopped at the railing and looked out over the comings and goings and scurryings . Somebody had to stay behind and start putting the proper fear into these people . Somebody had to be the go - between . All comments must meet the community standards outlined in Tor . com 's Moderation Policy or be subject to moderation . Thank you for keeping the discussion , and our community , civil and respectful . Name Email Comment |
This is an inspirational blog . I believe that God is involved in the everyday events of our lives , no matter how seemingly small . Sometimes He allows us to catch glimpses of what He 's been doing all along . So Fawn texts me two days day before Christmas on her way to the grocery store . " Mom , don 't kill me but I need ingredients for carrot cake again ! ! ! " Just a few weeks earlier she had called and asked me for the recipe , that time for Thanksgiving . The same thing happened last year and I think the year before . To tell you the truth , I 'm not sure how many times I 've given it to her , I 've lost count . But I can 't fuss at her too much . Being that my dad had been a meat cutter , I would call him from Alabama every year a few weeks before Christmas and ask him about a particular cut of meat that I was preparing for a special dinner . I used the same kind of roast and prepared it exactly the same way every year , but I always wanted to make sure that I got it right . " Dad , how long am I supposed to cook this if it 's a four - pound eye of round ? " I would ask . And every year he would patiently go over it with me again . The first year after he died , I felt a sense of loss as I prepared the meat to go into the oven . I had long mastered the recipe , but I missed the sound of his voice on the other end of the line , a thousand miles away in New York . I think the call I made from my kitchen each year on that particular occasion was something he had come to expect and looked forward to , simply one thing of many that connected us . I do the same thing with my sister Beth . There is a fruit salad carried down from my father 's family that requires a certain amount of jello , and every year I call to ask her how much I should use . It doesn 't matter that I 've made the stuff for most of my life . I call every year and ask her what to do . Except for this year . She 's been working a lot so I decided to go it alone . She called a couple of days ago . " So how much jello did you put in the fruit salad ? " she asked . I told her . " You should have put in another pack , " she informed me . Sigh . I told her I was afraid of putting in too much , I did that once and it wasn 't as good . " I thought it tasted pretty good this year , " I continued , " but maybe I should have put in one more pack . " Like I said , we go through this every Christmas . And in spite the fact that she makes me wonder if I 'll ever get it right , somehow it seems to draw us closer together . So I 'm thinking that maybe when Fawn calls from Green Bay and asks for that carrot cake recipe again or Angela texts from El Paso for the umpteenth time asking how much soup she needs for her favorite chicken recipe , they might be using it as a way to connect , to be closer to their mom who is so far away in New York . Maybe ? But then there 's Autumn down in Birmingham . She sent me a message a few weeks back . " Mom , need your pastry recipe . " I knew the one she was talking about , the one that came from her Grandma Burke . I always made it for my kids on Christmas and New Year 's mornings , one of their favorites . But I didn 't hear back from her after that , so a few days later I called and asked her if she still wanted the recipe . " No thanks mom . I found it . " Ok , so maybe my theory has some holes in it . Perhaps they 're more like their father , writing things down on little pieces of paper and then forgetting where they 've put them . It doesn 't really matter . They can ask me as often as they like , however they like . It 's all good as it helps keep them close in spite of the miles . Connected . And I need that . So back to the carrot cake recipe . Each time Fawn calls I pull it out of the large zip lock bag where I keep my special recipes . No neat little file box with pretty three by five cards for me . If I did that , I 'd have to recopy the ones my mom wrote down on whatever piece of paper she had close at hand . It probably wouldn 't be a bad idea . Her " Chicken Every Sunday " recipe is especially vulnerable , written on the thinnest of paper and in danger of disintegrating at any moment . But it reminds me of her , so I treat it as if I were handling one of the Dead Sea Scrolls , not wanting to lose any of her hieroglyphics . The " Old Henry Bars " recipe has faded some over the years , but she loved making them when she needed something quick and easy and yummy . I do the same . And then there 's the pastry recipe from my mother - in - law , her letters large and neat , much easier to read than my mother 's . A couple of the corners are ripped off and there are food stains on the front and back of the card . But I won 't replace it , it 's more valuable than ever now that she 's gone . Some years back one of my girls decided to take all the recipes out of the zip lock and organize and write them down into into a notebook . She was well into her project when I realized that she 'd been throwing away the originals , including the paper with my mother 's carrot cake recipe . That was the first one to be entered into the notebook , now titled " Marcy 's Carrot Cake . " The remaining originals are now neatly packed into the front pocket of that same notebook of which I pulled a cake recipe a few weeks back and made a couple of times over the holidays . I felt connected to the giver as I mixed the various ingredients , following the familiar handwriting . And naturally there were the compliments . " What a delicious cake , " they would say . And I would reply every single time , " I 'm glad you liked it . " And then I would smile . " That was my mother 's recipe . " It had been six months since I 'd flown to New York for the botox injections that help me talk and my voice was still doing relatively we l . I had a bit of raspiness and occasionally a word would catch in my throat , but all in all , I didn 't sound all that b d . In fact , I probably could have held off the trip a bit longer and if I had , I would have seen the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and the stores on Fifth Avenue all decorated for Christm s . It would have been a new experience for me , visiting New York during the holida s . But it wasn 't December , it was the first Tuesday in November , and there was a reason for going when I d d . I had been calculating in my head not how long it would take for the botox to help me talk , but how long it would take to let me sing aga Having a voice disorder , my inability to speak without forcing every word was hard enough , but losing my singing voice was especially devastating . Over time I accepted the reality of how my life had changed because of Spasmodic Dysphonia , but that didn 't change the longing I had to make music again . That is until early last year after meeting with a new doctor in New York . ( See " Singing " November 8 , 2010 . ) For the next few months I was able to do what I hadn 't done in four years , sing . Unfortunately the injections are temporary , eventually the effects of the botox wear off . Thus the spasms slowly returned and sadly the singing was the first to go . I had wanted to sing for Christmas , but it wasn 't going to happen . At least not this time . And that 's why I flew to New York when I did . As I sat in the chair waiting for the doctor to insert the needles into the muscles adjoining my vocal cords , I visited with his two assistants . They looked at me and both commented on how remarkably strong my voice was , even after six months . " You 're the best voice we 've heard today ! " one of them said . I said something about wanting to get it out of the way before the winter weather hit the city . I remembered my first time there . It was January and a frigid , biting wind swept mercilessly through the streets of Manhattan . I had never been colder in my entire life , so in part it was the truth . But there was more , the part that was harder to articulate . If I had spoken my heart it would have gone something like this : " Well actually , I 've been figuring out how many weeks it takes to sing again . I knew if I came now , I 'd time it just right for Christmas ! " Last Sunday evening I had the privilege of directing our Christmas cantata . Not only did the choir watch my hands to bring them in and cut them off at the appropriate moments , they were watching my lips as well . For you see , I sang along with them on every single song , every single note . And Christmas Sunday morning , just a few days from now , I 'll be singing the carols along with everyone else . It 's all I really wanted , all I asked for this year . I wanted to be singing by Christmas . Larry and I right before the cantata Warming up with the choir before the cantata Posted by We have a real Christmas tree set up in the sanctuary . A guy who attends here has a tree farm and asked if the church might like a live one this year . It 's big , about ten feet tall and a good seven or eight feet across . And it 's nice , real nice , evoking quite a few oohs and aahs over the past few weeks . There 's only one problem . It stopped drinking water a few days after it went up , and I 'm afraid it might start dropping too many of its needles . I like live trees , that 's what Larry and I had always had in our families . I still remember sitting on the couch in my piano teacher 's living room waiting for my lesson , watching the colors change on her aluminum tree . Even as a child I didn 't quite understand the appeal of that . But she lived in a neat little house without imperfect children or bothersome pets . Looking back now , I suspect that she simply didn 't want to deal with a dirty tree and those pesky pine needles . That 's the chance you take with the lives ones . There 's almost always a big sign on the lot advertising the trees as being fresh . Hmmm . I 've learned you need to size em up , shake them around a bit and then watch the eyes of the sales person as you ask when they were brought in . And if they don 't meet your gaze while talking , you take your business somewhere else . But no matter how hard you try , sometimes you get a bad one . Six or seven years ago while still living in Alabama , I noticed the water wasn 't going down in the tree stand . We were barely into December and our lowly fir was already beginning to drop needles . I went back to Lowes and approached a girl working in the garden center . " We bought a tree here a week or so ago and already it 's dropping needles , " I explained . She looked at me rather suspiciously . " Do you still have the receipt ? she asked . " Bring me the receipt along with the tree and we 'll give you another one . " I suspect she didn 't believe me , that I wouldn 't really come back with a tree . But a couple of hours later we pulled the poor half - naked tree out of our van and dragged it into thFinding a live tree was never a concern until we moved to Costa Rica for language school . It was 1985 , our first time so far from home . It was going to be hard enough as it was , and not having a proper tree would make it all the more difficult . Therefore , when Larry said that he had seen some being sold on the street six or seven blocks from the house , I was ecstatic . We rallied the kids and headed out in the direction where he had seen them . Not only was it a longer walk than what we had anticipated , we discovered that the trees were actually set up in the center of three major boulevards on a small medium . We managed to cross with all three kids in tow , ignoring the best we could the traffic whizzing all around us , and picked out a good - sized pine , remarkably similar to what we might have found in the States . Somehow we managed to get it back across the street to the sidewalk and started the long trek home , five gringos and a very cumbersome , heavier than anticipated pine tree . There were a few times during that year we could have really used a vehicle , this was one of them . Angela , Joel and Fawn on Christmas morning in Costa Rica It wasn 't too many days later that we discovered our treasure already dropping piles of needles . On Christmas morning it looked so sad that I didn 't even take a close - up shot of the tree with all three children sitting in front of it . Instead we took a shot of them sitting on the steps leading down to the living room , the tree well out of view . The best picture I have is one of our little chihuahua sitting underneath the lowest branches . Even in that , it 's pretty obvious that the arbol has nothing left of its former glory . A few hours later we removed all the decorations and dragged it outside , the remaining needles trailing behind . Chiqui under our very dry Christmas tree We had another reason for removing the remaining vestiges of Christmas that afternoon . My sister Dawn had come to spend Christmas with us , and the next morning we were going to load up on a bus and head to the beach for a few days . The tree might have been a disappointment , but the adventure of spending that memorable Christmas in Costa Rica was not . In fact , it turned out to be one of our absolute favorites ever . This will be our third year in this parsonage and three years with an artificial tree in the corner of our living room . Fifty - seven live trees , fifty - eight if you want to count the lemon from Lowe 's , and after all these years I buckle and resort to a fake . But someone offered it , we 're not putting money out for a new one every year and our kids aren 't around to fuss and complain . Besides , most people can 't even tell it 's not the real thing anyways . But the best part of all , it manages to drop a few needles , just enough to remind me of those past places and times that have been such an important part of my life . And in that remembering , I joy and I laugh . Posted by I went to the most wonderful wedding last week . It was on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this eleventh year at the eleventh hour when the music began . Each member of the wedding party came into the room dancing , including the bride 's eighty - something - year - old grandfather who had been given the honor of accompanying his granddaughter down the aisle at the eleventh minute . There she was , her hand on his arm moving to the beat . And the groom , who had just finished his own dance down the aisle , turned just in time to see his bride in the gown that had been kept hidden from him . His smile said it all . She was dressed in a lovely shade of watermelon pink . I 've been to lots of weddings . It 's one of those things that comes with being married to a pastor . I suppose being a pianist has something to do with it as well , I 've played the Bridal March more times than I can count . Most of them I 've pretty much forgotten , especially the ones that went off without a hitch or the ten - minute ceremonies followed by a reception in the basement of a church where one gets to eat cake , mixed nuts and mints . But there have been some unforgettables as well . For example , the time the bridesmaid fainted is pretty memorable , and the fact that she was close to six - feet tall made the fall all the more dramatic . Nor will I forget singing " Endless Love " while one particular bride shook uncontrollably and then couldn 't stop giggling during her vows . But I 've seen men and boys shake from nerves too , grooms with their knees knocking together and a ring bearer who threw up just as the service was about to begin . I was playing for a wedding in Montgomery , Alabama when the bride could not get down the aisle because of her hoop skirt , inspired no doubt by the lovely Scarlet O ' Hara herself . She finally had to tilt it upwards with one hand while clutching her father 's arm with the other , obviously not having taken the width of her dress into consideration when she booked the church . I 've also seen a veil catch on fire and a new bride grab and kiss her groom so long and hard that even the guests began to squirm a bit uncomfortably . So when it comes to weddings , I 've learned to expect anything . Well maybe not everything . There is a Hallmark commercial that features the brother of the bride who continually puts his foot in his mouth . When he stands to toast his sister , everyone suddenly becomes quite nervous , concerned at what he might say . But he wisely pulls a greeting card from his lapel , reads the beautiful prose that Hallmark has already penned and everyone breathes a great sigh of relief and applauds . Sigh . I so wish a particular relative of ours had pulled a greeting card out of his lapel while toasting his brother at a wedding we attended this past summer . But unlike the commercial , it was obvious from the first sentence that the best man was going to wing it . Thus when he said , " I probably shouldn 't say this , " he shouldn 't have . In retrospect , someone should have politely pulled him to the side and encouraged him to rethink what he was about to say , perhaps even better yet , tackled him to the ground . For as the video rolled , he proceeded to tell all assembled there in that lovely setting that when his brother , the groom , was especially nervous , he would go into the bathroom and . . . . are you ready ? . . . . take a really big dump . Oh my . I was sitting across from my sister - in - law whose big brown eyes grew considerably larger . The laughter he was anticipating never came , not even a ripple . No one spoke or even cleared their throat . Just silence . Thud . So back to the wedding with the bride in the watermelon dress . Her name is Amie , and the decision to get married hadn 't come easily for her . Her parents had a troubled marriage , and she and her brother ended up being raised by their grandparents . She had thought long and hard before agreeing to marry Jeremy , the man who would have waited forever if necessary . She had told him she would marry when she was eighty . " Then I will wait for you until you 're eighty , " he had said . Now who wouldn 't want to marry a man like that ? Amie planned her wedding for two years , and it was clear from the moment the first of her wedding party danced down the center aisle , she was going to do it her way no matter what anyone else might think . From the candy - filled centerpieces to the carnival - style photo booth complete with props , it was clear how much she wanted everyone to enjoy this day with her . Food was plentiful with a breakfast bar in one corner and a dinner buffet in the other , and I finished off my meal with a smoothie served in a fine china goblet . She had simply thought of everything . There was more of course . The day had started with music and dance and it would end with it as well . And though I 've no doubt Amie enjoyed every part of her wedding on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this eleventh year , I suspect her favorite part of all was the moment she stepped onto the dance floor . You see , she had come prepared . For poking out from under that lovely watermelon gown , she had worn the most comfortable of dancing shoes complete with laces , a pair of plaid sneakers . His name is Matt , he 's just recently had his thirteenth birthday and his last name is Woodf n . Nope , no relation to my son - in - law or the other Woodfins from the South land as far as I kn w . He lives near Detroit with his mom and dad and maybe some siblin s . I 'm not really sure about that pa t . He also happens to be a huge Packer f It was Saturday morning and Fawn wanted to take us to Kavarna , the coffee house that she had discovered right after moving to Green Bay . Zac had gone on ahead as he 'd made arrangements to meet someone there . It turns out it was birthday boy Matt and a few of his family members . They 'd all come in for the game , Matt 's first , and a great way to celebrate this milestone birthday . After all , turning thirteen is a big deal . I 'm not all that sure how the family had made contact with Zac in the first place . I imagine they probably follow the Packers pretty religiously and saw that the team had hired a new strength coach whose last name just happened to be the same as theirs . Who made the initial contact isn 't all that important to the story anyways . The thing that does matter is that a young assistant coach was making time to meet a kid who loves a certain football team and had traveled 300 miles to see them play . As we pushed through the front door , we immediately saw Zac near the entrance sitting across from a kid in a Packer 's sweatshirt and a middle - aged guy , obviously his dad . An older cousin and uncle were seated at the end of the table . We ordered our drinks then pulled up some chairs to listen as he talked with them about the team and answered what questions he could . They weren 't missing a word . To commemorate the occasion Fawn ordered a brownie and set it down in front of Matthew as we sang to him . The whole experience must have been a bit overwhelming , he asked his dad if he could save it for later . Fawn and I were the first to leave . She had dinner guests coming later and we had a couple of errands to run . I 'd also promised her that I 'd make some sauce out of the apples we 'd brought from New York to add to the meal . So we said our goodbyes , not expecting to see any of them again of course . The stadium holds almost eighty - thousand people . The chances of running into them the next day was highly unlikely . We 'd only planned to stop at the Pro Shop at Lambeau just long enough to pick out a couple of shirts to wear to the game the next day . The place was crowded , wall - to - wall with excited Packer fans who had come in from all over the country . Between checking out the racks and waiting in line for a dressing room , we had already spent more time there than expected . Also mingled there among the crowd of shoppers were several families of players and staff members who had traveled in for the game just like we had . Every few minutes we were being introduced to another mom or cousin or grandparent and it was during one of those chance meetings that we were told the training area was going to be open to family members that afternoon . All we needed was a player or staff member to take us through . And for us , that would be Zac . We hadn 't expected to see where he worked . We were cool with it , but now that I knew we were going to see the facility , I was stoked . The applesauce could wait . As we congregated outside the Pro Shop , I was surprised to see that someone else had joined us . Zac had received permission to invite a few extras to come along , three men and a thirteen - year - old boy who had come from Detroit to see his first Packer game . I would have loved to have been there when those guys got that call . After the elevator had descended into the belly of Lambeau , I had a sense of anticipation as we stepped off and followed behind our newly - appointed guide . I enjoyed the sense of privilege I felt while checking out the rooms full of exercise equipment , seeing the team dining hall , visiting the locker room , taking in names like Woodson , Matthews , Rodgers and standing just feet away from their gear . It was fun trying out the recliners in the theater and standing just feet away from Bart Starr as he passed us in one of the hallways . Finally , walking through the tunnel , imagining the roar of the home crowd as we approached the field , looking up and seeing the size and beauty of the place from that vantage point , it was all very cool . Larry , Matthew , Nathan , Me , Steve and Bob in the theater But of everything I remember about that afternoon , the thing that stands out most for me were the smiles that never left the faces of Matthew and his fami y . This special tour , being in that part of Lambeau that many never get to see , this was something they hadn 't anticipated a few hours earli r . When I saw a player out of uniform , I didn 't usually know who it w s . People look a lot different without helmets on their heads and don 't usually wear names on their backs so people like me can identify th m . But it was obvious that these three men and a boy seemed to know just about everything and everybody connected to the Green Bay te That was the last we saw Matthew and his three companions though a couple weeks later his dad sent me the pictures of their tr p . He also wrote a letter to Zac , thanking him for his part in making his son 's birthday so speci l . Actually , I think the whole story is pretty speci l . And just think , it all started with a na Larry and I took in a movie this week . It 's called " Courageous , " and it was produced by the good people of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany , Georgia . They 've done some pretty ambitious projects including " Facing the Giants " and " Fireproof . " They 've obviously got some very talented people on staff there , people like brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick who write the screen plays , get the movies made and then somehow manage to get them distributed all over the United States . Amazing what a couple of guys can do , huh ? After the movie was over , Larry and I remained seated and watched the credits roll until the end . I 'll admit , those were some of the most interesting I 've ever seen . I think everybody that lives in or has ever visited Albany , Georgia was listed including Jim Bob and Michele Duggar and their nineteen kids . I 'm not sure what they did , but they 're there . And I think everyone that brought in a nice home - cooked meal got their names on the big screen including most of the Sunday school classes at Sherwood Baptist Church . But the best part came towards the end when the dozens of baby sitters who helped watch kids during those long , grueling months of film - making are recognized as well , a few seconds of film devoted just to them . There was a time I wouldn 't have bothered with the credits . They seem to take forever , and I thought it totally unnecessary to include all those hundreds of names . Then in 2003 some big - time movie people decided to make a movie in our part of Alabama and put out a call for people who might like to be a part of it all . I sent in my resume along with a picture and they called me within a week or so . A few days later I drove to Montgomery to be fitted for my costume and get my assignment . I would be filming for three days on a cotton farm about a forty - five minute drive from my house . My only instructions were to wash my hair each night , set it in sponge rollers while it was still wet , sleep in them and wear them to the site . Oh , and I was not to put on any makeup . It was still dark when I arrived at the farm that first morning . There were signs pointing to the parking areas , and after I locked up my van , a shuttle took me and several others to a large tent set up in the middle of a cotton field . We were encouraged to help ourselves to a nice breakfast that had been set out and after that proceeded to another tent for makeup and then on to another for our costumes . Turns out I was hired as a background actor , my official title . Okay , I know I spoke no lines , was hired merely to fill in the landscape and got minimum wage . But I must admit it made me feel good to have the word " actor " in my job description , especially as I stood on that Alabama river bank for three days in February in nothing but a skirt and a blouse and a blazer . Those who live elsewhere assume that Alabama can 't possibly get all that cold , even in the dead of winter . Well , they 're wrong . It can and it was . I was freezing as were all the others who stood in costume on the bank of the Coosa . I shouldn 't complain , at least I had long sleeves to protect me a bit from the wind cutting across that river . I could have been one of the girls dressed in a strapless prom dress or a circus entertainer dressed in a leotard . If it wasn 't for those running out with blankets and setting up propane heaters between takes , I think we would have stood frozen in place until Spring came to thaw us out . I came away from that experience with an appreciation for those who were working so hard behind the scenes , and in this particular movie , there were hundreds of them . I would arrive at the set before daybreak , but the extras ' coordinator and her helpers had been checking people in as early as 4 a . m . One crew had been preparing breakfast , others were driving the shuttles back and forth , several were doing makeup and hair and getting everyone into costume while others were setting up for the day 's shoots . And who knows how late they had been working into the night , many surviving on just a few hours of sleep . During the filming , as soon as the action stopped and cameras were being repositioned , people would suddenly appear with those blankets and heaters I mentioned while others would move quickly up and down the hill rearranging hair and checking makeup . Then , just as quickly , everyone and everything would quickly disappear as the director began the count once again and called for the action to begin . If you asked me the name of the film , who directed and what actors starred in it , I could spout their names off quickly . But beyond that I can 't tell you the name of the woman who cast me or who did my hair or helped fit me for my costume or wrapped me in a blanket during the coldest of those three days . I no longer remember them or even what they looked like . They were simply people working behind the scenes , doing their jobs . The movie did real well by the way . It was even up for a couple of Academy Awards . But don 't look for my name in the credits . Not everybody thinks like those people at the Sherwood Baptist Church . Actually , don 't look for the names of any of the background actors . We all knew that was just a fancy name for what we really were anyways , extras . But the others , those working behind scenes , doing their part to take a story and visualize it for us , their names are there . And that 's as it should be . That 's why I don 't complain about those names that run after the movie has finished telling its story . A few years later , I got a phone call one night from one of the guys in our church in South Carolina . " Marcy , is it true that you were in that movie ' Big Fish ? ' " he asked . I told him it was true . " I want you to know , " he said . " A few years ago I was at the end of my rope . My life was going nowhere . I was into drugs and alcohol big time , so I checked myself into a motel . I turned the TV on and that movie was playing . " He paused for a moment . " You know about my dad and all , how he died in prison for killing my mom . I held a lot of anger and bitterness towards him . " He took a breath . " By the time the movie was over I was bawling . That story helped me to get some stuff resolved where my dad was concerned . Just wanted you to know . " Larry 's talking about seeing " Courageous " a second time . I 'm not sure yet if I 'm going or not , but I 'm tempted . It 's a good story and hopefully might help change some lives for the better . And if I do , I think I just might hang around for a few minutes at the end . I wouldn 't mind watching the credits again . I 'm still working through this thing called getting older . I know , nowadays sixty is still considered relatively young , especially when you have so many living well into their eighties and nineties . Still , the realization that I 'm here at this juncture has me reflecting a bit more than usual on what I 've done thus far and what it is exactly that I 'd still like to accomplish during this latest chapter of my life . I think it 's easier to explain where I want to go if I reflect on where I 've come from . So what better place to start than near the beginning . I 'll never forget Mrs . Slocum 's kindergarten class or how shy I was , too afraid to ask questions or speak what was on my mind . I recall the crush I had on the cutest boy there , but because some little red - headed , freckle - faced girl boldly announced to everyone that she liked the same boy , he agreed that he would indeed be her boyfriend . I still remember wishing that I 'd had the same kind of courage that she did . If so , perhaps he would have been my boyfriend instead of hers . Actually , probably not . But that little episode in my five - year - old life reminds me that I don 't want to live in fear of what others might think . I want to speak and live out my life with courage and confidence . Secondly , I don 't want to get too comfortable in my little corner of the world . Our kindergarten classroom sat next door to Miss Smith 's first - grade class . I still have these few seconds of recall where I 'm passing those first - graders in the hallway and feeling a sense of awe at their size , their maturity . I couldn 't wait to get there . As a five - year - old , I only saw what was close to me and anticipated only that which was directly ahead . My world was pretty small back then and consisted of my family , a few neighborhood friends , my church and Mrs . Slocum 's kindergarten class . As I became older , it got bigger of course . Going to college a thousand miles from home , pastoring churches around the country , learning to speak Spanish and living in a third - world country , these challenging , and yet wonderful experiences grew me and enlarged my world . I 'll be honest , there 's still a little part of me that wants to sit back and surround myself with things that are familiar , comfortable . But how easy it would be to become complacent , just coasting along for the rest of my life and missing those wonderful adventures that God still has planned for me . The school bus dropping me off with my brother Rex Third , I don 't want to be afraid of the " what ifs . " One day not too long after I started school , I was sitting in the back seat of the bus heading hom Fourth , I don 't want the fear of failure to keep me from taking risks . When I turned sixteen , I was afraid every time I got behind the wheel of a car and froze when it was time to take my driving test . I failed of course . A year or so later I tried again . And failed again . I would take the test four times before I could finally stop renewing my permit and get a license . When we moved to Honduras , I had to learn to drive stick on a Toyota double - cab truck if I wanted to get anywhere . The narrow roads , the absence of traffic lights , the myriad of buses and cabs and horse - drawn carts and bicycles weaving in and out of traffic absolutely terrified me . But Larry was patient , taking me out on Sunday afternoons , allowing me to practice shifting when the traffic wasn 't so heavy . Finally the day came when he had to leave for a two - week trip to Jamaica , and suddenly it was up to me to get our kids to school across town everyday . I did it , and soon I was weaving in and out of traffic along with the rest of them . Those past challenges remind me that I don 't want to come to the end of my life filled with regret because of the things I wanted to do but didn 't because I was too afraid to go after them . Angela , Fawn and Joel in the back of the Toyota Finally , I don 't want to stop dreaming . I want to believe that God still has great things in mind for me , but I won 't discover what those things are if I don 't keep moving forward . To do that I have to take to heart the other goals I 've set for myself : to live my life courageously and with confidence , to get out of my comfort zone , to quit worrying about the " what ifs " and take some risks . Those things don 't come natural for me as I am by nature a bit of a coward . But with God 's help , I can do and be all that He has placed within me . After all , I left kindergarten a long time ago . Posted by Joel on his fourth birthday I 've always loved October best of all . As a kid , I would rake up the leaves from the large maple that sat in the corner of our yard and throw them over the bank into the empty canal by our house . Then a few of us would hike through the neighborhood , rakes in hand , asking neighbors if we could gather up theirs as well . When we felt that we had enough , lining up one by one , we would jump into the wonderful piles of reds and yellows and oranges just a few feet below us , making twists and turns as we went , much like swimmers jumping into a pool . The earthy smell of leaves and the sound and feel of them crackling beneath my feet stirs up such wonderful memories for me still . It was and continues to be my favorite time of the year . Therefore , when Angela my first daughter was born , it seemed somehow fitting that she should come in October . She arrived during the second week , just a few days after my birthday . The Pennsylvania trees were ablaze against the cloudless sky the day we drove home from the hospital with her , so Larry took the back way from Towanda to North Rome through the Endless Mountains with glorious vistas all the way . Two years later , waiting just long enough for October to roll around again , Joel showed up on the first day of the month . Fawn made her entrance three years later and Autumn , appropriately named , came four years after that . And yes , they both made their appearances in October . What used to be the most harried time of the year for me begins tomorrow . My only son turns thirty - two . A few days ago a card with a check enclosed went out , not terribly personal I know , but he could use the money . This will be the more personal gift to him , my words , which will come slowly and deliberately , because that 's simply how I write . I hope that he will value and treasure them more than anything monetary I could give . He likes words , especially when they 're written down , and he often expresses his own thoughts that way as well , but mostly in poetry . Dear Joel : A guy who writes poetry has to be pretty sensitive , but with that comes a certain vulnerability as well . I remember the time you wrote something for a girl you liked in high school . If I remember right , she returned it and told you she thought it was stupid . Ouch . That must have hurt . But that tender spirit has been with you since you were a young boy . Do you remember packing up most of your toys while we were living in Honduras and carrying them down the street to Victor and his younger brothers and sisters ? After all , you figured they didn 't have much , so why not give what you had . And the year we were living in Pulaski , you went with the youth group to help out at a soup kitchen in Syracuse . You were so touched by the need that you dropped all the money you 'd saved towards Christmas and put it in the offering bucket . After our move to Alabama , you reached out to those on the fringe , the misunderstood , the troubled . You even brought some of them home with you , a few of whom are still in your life . I saw how you were down in the Bayou after Katrina hit , working in the relief effort . I think it was then your father and I knew without a doubt that this is what you were made for , to serve . This has been a hard year for you , one of the worst . I know there have been times when you didn 't think you could survive it , didn 't know if you wanted to . But you have . You 've persevered , and with so many encouraging you , loving you and praying for you , you have made it this far . Now it 's your birthday . All is new , and there is no better time to reflect on and prepare for what 's ahead . It won 't all be easy , but it will be good if you trust your Creator to work out the details . I want to remind you of something you wrote during the darkest of days : The italics are mine , but the words are yours . Open your eyes , listen with your ears and welcome the opportunities that your Heavenly Father brings your way . Utilize the many gifts that He has given you , and begin to serve the " least of these . " Only you will know what that means . Live each day in anticipation , and look forward to your tomorrows with expectancy . And He will begin to show you what it is that you 've been created for . With the Windows Down by Joel Burke I 'm really struggling with this patience thing lately . I 've got a couple people in my life who are really getting under my skin , stretching me to the max . I have already written about Marva and the challenges she brought to my life . ( You can check it out on my blog posted March 11 . ) I need to continue her story , however , because even though God had changed my heart towards her , He was continuing to process the fruit of patience in my life through her . That took some time . Here are some excerpts from my journal during our final few months in Honduras : March 4 , 1993 Marva called out to me as I passed her home this afternoon . " Wait Miss Marcia , " she called . " You 've got to see my little girl ! " She carefully , lovingly pulled an 8 by 10 glossy out of the folder she was holding and beamed as I admired the pretty teenager posing with her escort at a formal dance . " That 's my pretty black baby , Miss Marcia . She 's growing so much . What do you think of my Cindy , Miss Marcia ? " Cindy , the one person in Marva 's life that gives her pride and determination to live another day . In the hell of her unhappy life , there is Cindy . What does it matter that she 's not seen her for seven years . Or that she lives in a different world , so far away from her mother . She simply is . She is the one thing that Marva has done right in her life . Marva tried to reach her daughter in New Orleans again . She has phoned collect four times in the past week , and every time the person on the other end says that she is not there . I feel sorry for Marva . She knows that they 're probably lying . She didn 't leave right away . I ended up pulling out photo albums and showing her pictures of our families back home . And then right before she left she asked me , " Just a little favor . " She pulled out a plastic bottle , and I thought for sure she was going to beg some more Vaseline . But not this time . " Could I have just a little peanut butter ? " she asks . I would rather spare my Vaseline ! Peanut butter is this family 's most precious commodity and I told her so . But I pulled out my last jar and dished out a few tablespoons into her container . Fawn had been standing there observing everything when suddenly Marva orders her out of the kitchen . " Leave and don 't be looking at me ! " she says . " I was raised as a little girl not to be hanging around the adults when they were having a conversation . " I couldn 't believe what I was hearing . No one was going to speak to my child like that in her own home . I looked Marva directly in the face and told her that I was appalled . Unless the conversation was a private one , Fawn had every right in the world to be in the kitchen . " You misunderstand me , " she kept saying . " Oh , Miss Marcia . You are " wexed " with me , aren 't you ? " Pleased down be " wexed " with me . I 'm just ashamed to have to ask for the peanut butter . " I responded that I was not vexed with her , but that if she was too embarrassed to have to ask me for the peanut butter , and if she couldn 't ask for it in the front of my daughter , then she shouldn 't have asked for it in the first place . That woman ! She makes me so impatient and angry at times . Marva was back to use the phone this morning . Fortunately , it was just a local call to be made . Afterwards it was , " Miss Marcia , could I just be asking a little something . Just a little skin cream is all I be asking . " So I gave her some Vaseline Intensive Care and sent her on her way . Marva came to use the phone , but I think she 's lonely more than anything . She always stalls and wants to talk . And if she can manage it somehow , she gets something out of me . Today she asked me for the leftover egg salad that she saw in the dog dish . " Could you let me have that , Miss Marcia ? " she says . At first I thought I had misunderstood . Food out of a dog dish ? She was serious . " Marva , that 's there for the dog . He 's already eaten a bit and it has dog food mixed in with it . " " It doesn 't matter . " Marva had nothing in the house to eat . Her Mr . Albert would be bringing her something at the end of the day she assured me . But in the meantime , she was hungry . So I gave her half a loaf of bread . I told Marva this afternoon that we were leaving this summer . At first she misunderstood . She thought I was speaking of vacation , but I explained that there was a good possibility that we would not be returning to Honduras and that someone else would be living in this house . At first she didn 't say a word . Then the tears started down her cheeks and she began to rock back and forth . Finally she said , " Oh Miss Marcia , nothing good ever lasts . " She started talking about all the hurts and disappointments in her life . Her mother had lavished her with gifts sent from the States when she was young . Even as a teenager , her mother sent her beautiful dresses from California . " I was dressed the best of anyone in the whole Panayoti Store , " she said . " I had my teeth and I was an aristocrat . Some day you 'll see Miss Marcia . I 'll have my new teeth and wear shoes and pretty dresses again . You 'll see . " And then she paused . " Nothing good ever lasts . " I lost it with Marva today . She came over this morning to say that she was on her way to the emergency room . She has a tremendous amount of pain in her back and sides and wasn 't able to sleep all night . It sounds like a possible kidney infection . She had stopped by to see if someone were going to town and might be able to drop her off at the hospital , but since our car was in the shop this morning , that was impossible . I admit that I get tired of seeing her everyday , and sometimes it is so difficult to get rid of her . I kept trying to get her out the door telling her that the sooner she was at the hospital , the less time she would have to wait for admittance . But she just didn 't seem to be in any great hurry . She told me that Mr . Albert had given her money for the emergency room . Good ! But she needed a little more to take a taxi . So that was it . " Marva , " I spoke not too kindly . " Why can you never come here without asking me for something ? " And I pulled some change out of my purse and handed it to her . But she refused to take it . The look of shock on her face surprised me . I didn 't think that what I had said would affect her . Then she began to cry . " No , I don 't want the money . Oh , Mr . Albert was right . He told me that I shouldn 't be asking you for things . I feel so bad , I feel so bad . " And then I felt bad ! It 's not her fault that she 's sick . I hurt her very deeply by what I said . I could have just said no and left it at that . It took her several minutes to calm down and for the tears to stop . I apologized repeatedly for what I had said , and as it turned out , she did finally take the money . Humanly speaking , I suppose I was justified in what I said to her . But in the spiritual realm , I was unkind and insensitive . My past experiences with Marva have shown me that she is quick to forget when I have been rude or abrupt with her . Hopefully , this time will be no exception . Marva did come back yesterday afternoon to let me known that she just had a small infection . I guess I 'm forgiven . Clark and Linda Huffer , good friends from Topeka , Kansas have come to work and be with us for a week . She brought us several jars of peanut butter . I took one to Marva , partially because I know she loves peanut butter , and also to let her known that I truly am her friend . Marva was here three times today . Larry should never have told her that his father is ill . Besides wanting to use the phone now , she has to make at least one trip a day just to ask about how he 's doing and to assure us that she 's " always remembering him in her sweet prayers . " I don 't want to think right now . I don 't want any demands put on me . Marva was ready to kill both her neighbor and Mr . Albert last night . She had a crowbar read , stowed underneath her porch . But it 's as if she knows I can talk her out of her anger . So she came looking for me , seething with rage . I walked to her home and found her almost irrational . She was so angry , pacing back and forth , unable to stand still . I never did fully understand why she had murder in mind , but " her enemy " had blatantly insulted her , and Mr . Albert did not come to her defense . So she was going to do them both in . Emotionally , I was exhausted . I didn 't feel like talking her out of killing her neighbor and Mr . Albert . I don 't think I even prayed for wisdom this time . Finally , when she decided to take a breath I said , " So you 'll be just like them , Marva . " And I said the same thing three times . " Jesus could have have lashed out at those who hurt him , Marva . He 's God . He could have destroyed them . But he didn 't do a thing . You 'll be just like them , Marva . Just like them . " She was at my house early this morning . " Oh Miss Marcia . Thank you so much for keeping me from killing my neighbor and Mr . Albert . I just got the news that my brother is here ! He 's coming to see me today , and if you could lend me four lempiras to get a cab to buy some different clothes so I could be seeing him looking all nice , Miss Marcia ! " Well , at least for today Marva is thinking about other things . For today , she 's " normal . " And just maybe she 'll not think about killing anyone for a long time . At least not until I am gone from here . Marva showed up at church tonight ! She has said all along that she would be there some evening before we leave . I must admit that I really didn 't believe she 'd come through . But she did , she did . God bless her . Larry and I would see Marva once more when we returned a few years later on a ministry team . On finding out that we were coming , she sent a letter with a list of items that she needed . I still have that letter asking for a blanket , some sheets , a black or brown sweater , a pair of size 12 shoes , some skirts , blouses , a bottle of perfume , some curtains for her front window and two jars of peanut butter . Larry and I packed up what we could between our two suitcases . She was extremely pleased . About six months later we received a letter from the missionaries who had moved into the mission house and had become Marva 's neighbors . It 's postmarked June 6 , 1998 . Here 's a bit of it : Dear friends . . . . We wanted to let you know of the death of Marva , our neighbor . She entered the hospital Atlantida ( government - run , deplorable conditions ) for a month for treatment of a long - term infection in her leg . When she came out , she was having trouble breathing - shortness of breath . Though she received some treatment for her breathing problems , she died waiting for money from her uncle , so she could go to D ' Antoni or Centro de Salud . . . . So much of her life was sad . Your family 's care for her was a source of much encouragement . Her daughter Cindy did not see her before she died though she had been notified of Marva 's illness . Sorry to be the bearer of sad news , but we thought you would want to know of her death . I still think of Marva , especially when the demands of people or ministry begin to wear on me . I recall my sadness at the news , but I also know that I had no regrets where she was concerned . There will always be the Marvas in my life . I just pray the lessons learned during those years will stay with me , and that when I 'm called upon to give up something precious , kind of like that peanut butter , I will do it in a way that pleases my Father . Last week there was some catastrophic flooding going on not too far from here . The county right to the south of us got hit real bad and to our west there are lots of homes and businesses that were under water as well . They 've got some work ahead of them : cleaning up , drying out and then rebuilding . I know . Our family was in the same place once . It was the summer of 1972 and my dad was about to complete an extensive remodeling project on our home . The house was well over a hundred years old when we moved there in 1956 and it needed lots of work . He started by working on the bedrooms upstairs then progressed to the ground floor . He tackled the bathroom first , then went on to the kitchen . I still remember my mom preparing food in the garage where my dad had set up her appliances . I 'm not sure how long she cooked out there , but it was probably for several weeks , especially considering how much had to be done . My father had saved the living room for last , and he was just within days of finishing . The wall paper had been replaced with new wood paneling , and where the linoleum once was , there was now gold - shaded carpet . All it needed was to be secured and the baseboards put in place . What had been started so long ago was almost done . It was Thursday , June 22nd . I was in the dining room playing our old upright piano when I saw my mother walk through with a couple of lamps , heading towards the stairs . We had attended a concert at church earlier that evening but there weren 't many there . It had been raining for several hours , and there was news of some possible flooding . It was still coming down hard when we got home . I got up off the piano bench and started carrying things upstairs , still not quite believing that all this hauling was necessary . I didn 't know it , but that would be the last time I would ever sit on that bench or play that old piano . Within an hour , water from the Allegany began to fill our neighborhood forcing us to make a hasty retreat for our neighbors who lived across the way . They were lucky , they had the wonderful fortune of living on a hill . Hurricane Agnes had hit with a vengeance . After the waters receded and the damage was accessed , it would prove to be the costliest storm up to that time in U . S . history . All I knew was that our little street in Weston 's Mills was a mess . As soon as they were able , the firemen came through and starting at the one end of Chestnut Street , turned their high - powered hoses on and began the task of forcing the several inches of mud out of each home . The piles of water - logged couches , worthless appliances and anything else that couldn 't be salvaged was piled up at the end of each driveway waiting for the trucks to come through and haul it all away . There is a picture somewhere that shows our newly - laid carpet rolled up on top of the piano . It was naturally longer than the old upright and one end is shown hanging over the side . The part that hangs is wet and dirty , the rest is clean and dry . Thanks to my father 's quick thinking and the height of that instrument , the carpet was saved . Not too many days later he hauled it up to a friend 's yard , spread it out and thoroughly cleaned it . Several months later he laid it once again , but this time he tacked it down , securing it firmly into place . He had finally finished the job . The hardest thing to remove from the house was the piano . Naturally it was heavy , the old uprights were never easy to move . But it was more than that . It had a history . It sat in my grandparents ' home for many years , having been purchased by my mother for her youngest brother and sister , both several years her junior . My grandfather was crippled , unable to afford such a luxury . But my mother saw the potential in both of them and somehow knew they needed this . My aunt told me recently that it could easily have been her salvation , keeping her occupied for hours and away from things that could have been potentially harmful . For me , it was the first one I played and loved . Whenever we went to see my grandparents , my favorite thing to do was sit at the piano , at first playing what I could by ear and eventually adding songs from my lesson books . I had been taking lessons for awhile when the piano was moved from the little house in Farmer 's Valley to our place in Weston 's Mills . There was no comparison between the ordinary upright I had been using to the instrument that now sat in the dining room . It had the most wonderful touch and tone , for me it was perfection and an absolute delight to play . And I did , everyday . My sister thinks it was my Uncle Glade who helped my dad push the piano to the end of the driveway . I wasn 't there , but I had touched it for one last time shortly after it was taken out of the house . It 's been almost forty years , and still that moment stands out more than any other . I reached down as if to play a note , and the key broke away beneath my finger . I had expected to hear something come out of it , but there was nothing . No sound , just silence . Later , my mother watched as the piano was wheeled away from the house to the trash pile . The two men had just a few more feet to go when suddenly music came out from deep within the belly of that old worn and weary piano . One last time . And it was at that moment my mother saw my father cry . A few weeks after the flood , my mother asked me to go for a ride with her one evening . We ended up at a home where there was a spinet piano for sale , and she wanted me to try it out . I said it would do , and she wrote out a check for four - hundred dollars that same night . It was the first major thing I remember her replacing for our home , for me . At least I thought so at the time . But maybe it was for all of us . Because in the midst of what must have seemed insurmountable , she knew that we needed the music again . The little spinet sat in the newly remodeled dining room for several years . My sister Dawn has it in her home in Maryland now . It 's fine with me , as I was never particularly attached to it anyways . It fulfilled its purpose . It brought the music back and kept our home filled up with it for a long , long time . As for me , I 've had several pianos since then including a couple spinets , some nice consoles and even a medium grand . But I don 't miss any of them . It 's only that old upright that graced our home until the rising waters silenced its song that still holds my heart . This is my young neighbor Stacy Lowe playing the piano at our house several summers before Hurricane Agnes . A Valentine for Frances Several adults with special needs attend our church . Tim is one of my favorites . After you read his story , I think you 'll see why . . . . A Valentine for Frances Several adults with special needs attend our church . Tim is one of my favorites . After you read his story , I think you 'll see why . . . . |
This is the fourth chapter of ' Bear Hunter ' . A new chapter will come out every week . Any comments or questions can be directed to the author at nothlit ( at ) hotmail ( dot ) com Something snapped in my head . The tension , the fear - it just exploded like a red flash bomb before my eyes . I made a fist with my right hand , bent over Matt and swung it savagely , focusing all my rage into that punch . My fist slammed against Matt 's face and knocked his head sideways . When I drew my fist back , shaking with fury , I expected him to retort with one of his damn wisecracks , or taunt me again . Maybe pull yet another weapon on me . Instead his head lolled back , limp , his chin resting on his chest . He was unconscious . A sobering rush of regret fell over me like a pail of cold water dumped on me from above . I took a step back , shocked at what I 'd done . " Matt ? " I didn 't know what to say . I half - reached out to him , but he threw his head back as far away from me as he could , bound to the chair as he was . I drew my hand back . I felt bad enough to apologize , but something stopped me . Probably the scathing look he gave me , even bleeding and in pain as he must have been . I suddenly had to get out of there . I bent over to pick up the BB gun , tightened the rope quickly to mend the damage Matt had made when he cut it . Then I left , going upstairs and leaving him there . He didn 't say anything , but I could feel his eyes on my back as I climbed up to the second floor . I went to the bathroom and took off my jacket , then pulled my shirt off , too . There was a small , round puncture wound where the pellet had hit . It hadn 't penetrated too deep thanks to the thick jacket I wore , but the wound was bleeding . I washed it automatically , using the soap I found nearby to clean it well . I wondered briefly if I should get Matt something for the bleeding where my punch had cut his lip , but I discarded the idea immediately . He 'd probably spit in my face . I washed my face with cold water and looked into my own eyes in that big bathroom mirror . I couldn 't believe I 'd done that to Matt . I 'd never had any trouble looking at myself in the mirror , but now for the for time I didn 't like what I saw . The realization stung , but there was also anger in there . I 'd had no choice , dammit ! Or had I ? I stomped out of the bathroom , banging the door shut . He 'd shot me . I 'd reacted on impulse . Only . . . it was wrong , and I knew it . It was one thing trading punches with a guy who could fight back , on even ground . It was another thing entire to hit a bound and helpless guy and knock him unconscious . I turned on the wall suddenly , made a fist and punched the wood , hard . I let out a wordless growl as my fist hit it , releasing the anger I felt even as the walls shook with the force of my punch . The impact hurt , but that was good . I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the wall , forcing myself to breath slow and deep . I had to get a grip on myself . I couldn 't afford to lose it now . After a minute or so , I walked into Matt 's room feeling slightly calmer . I really didn 't have anything else to do . The rain was still pounding against the window , and the bedroom was dark in the gray , washed - out light from outside . The room told me a lot about Matt now that I looked at it carefully , taking in the details I had missed the night before . It was a neat room , for one . Nothing out of place . The only smudges on the floor were those I 'd left from yesterday night , when I 'd come all dirty from the fight on the beach . My footprints were visible as patches of mud and sand on the otherwise clean floor . The bed covers were rumpled from last night , too , but everything else was in its place , spotless and well - ordered . There was a bookcase with books of many shapes and sizes neatly arranged on each shelf ; some were about hunting , others were novels and a few were about movies I 'd never heard of . There was a sizeable DVD stack by the wall opposite the door , with little labels identifying movies by genre . The posters on the walls were of old sci - fi movies , just like I 'd noticed last night . I saw posters for The Thing , Tarantula , It Came from Outer Space and so on . The closet was closed , so I didn 't open it . On a shelf by the bed were the first framed pictures I saw in the house , next to the telephone . I sat on the bed to look at them better . The mattress creaked under my weight . One of them was a really old , black - and - white photograph that had turned almost yellow with age . It showed an old bearded man holding a shotgun and standing with one foot up on a log in a very uncomfortable , stiff position , obviously posing for the camera . A low log cabin was visible in the background , and I realized with a shock that it was the same cabin that made up the main room below us , only many decades ago , when it had just been built . I briefly remembered that Matt had mentioned his great - grandfather had built the cabin and wondered if that was him . The other three pictures were of Matt . A man and a woman appeared in some of them ; his father and mother , most likely . In one of them Matt couldn 't have been older than ten or eleven . He was holding up a salmon that was almost as big as he was , a wide grin on his face and standing next to his father bearing a proud smile for his son , his hand on Matt 's shoulder and giving the thumbs - up to the camera . The second picture showed a teenage Matt , his father and his mother , all of them wearing formal clothes , posing for a Christmas card picture ; I could tell by the Christmas tree in the background . The last picture was of Matt holding something that could have been a high school diploma , holding the camera with his other hand by the looks of it , hugging his father and both of them smiling with huge grins as the picture was taken . I wondered what had happened to Matt 's parents , since he lived here alone now . Looking out through the open door to his room , I saw the locked door on the other side of the hallway . That was probably the master bedroom , but why had Matt locked it ? I stood up , crossed the hallway and tried the lock again . It wouldn 't budge . I tried watching the TV for a bit , half - consciously postponing the moment where I 'd have to go downstairs again . The reception on the TV was awful , though , and all I found was a blurry infomercial channel that didn 't keep my attention for long . Outside , the rain kept falling . I 'd never seen it rain so hard , or for so long in my life . I wondered if it would ever stop . I thought about what I 'd do now . I was having second thoughts about my impulsive plan to stay in this house against its owner 's will , but there really was nowhere else to go right now . I was trapped in here with Matt , and he was trapped in here with me . I toyed with the idea of letting him go , but I knew that wouldn 't work . I was in too deep to back out now , and the only thing I could do was keep going as I had , hoping the storm would end soon so I could leave . By then , hopefully , the cops would have stopped looking for me and I 'd be able to go somewhere else entirely . Coming to Alaska had been a stupid idea . Like Matt had told me , if I really wanted to get lost so people wouldn 't find me , the best place to do it was in a big city where nobody looked at you twice - not a small town where I stood out the minute I arrived . Eventually I found the DVD remote and hit play to whatever was in it . A movie I didn 't know began to play , and I half - watched it , lost in thought . About two hours later the movie ended and I stood up , stretching . I was hungry again ; it was almost dinnertime . I turned off the TV and went back downstairs at last , still angry at myself for earlier . Matt had been dozing from the looks of it , but he snapped back to alertness when he heard my heavy steps come down . Seeing the bruise that was already visible on Matt 's left cheek , I felt another stab of regret . " Hey , " I said as I approached . " I 'm hungry . I 'll make something for dinner . " Shrugging , I went into the kitchen and rummaged around the drawers . I found some cans of tuna and a jar of mayo . I dumped the contents of four cans in a big bowl and added the mayonnaise , stirring a bit . I 've never been a great cook and that was about as much I could be bothered to do regarding a meal , but for me it was good enough . It worried me a bit that I didn 't see that much food in the fridge or in the pantry , and I remember what Matt had said : he 'd just been bringing in supplies on his boat when I 'd forced him to come straight here . Judging by what food there was , I guessed we 'd be good for three or four days more . After that . . . well , I 'd have to see . He drank the water first , so quickly that I realized he must have been really thirsty - but he didn 't say a word to me or ask for more . I worked on the knots quickly , loosening the arm portions just enough to allow Matt to move them and eat , and I took the glass away after he 'd emptied it . I filled it back up in the kitchen and took it to him , putting it in his hand without a word . Matt seemed surprised I 'd noticed he was thirsty , but he didn 't thank me . He ate in silence and made it clear I wasn 't welcome there , so I ate my food in the kitchen . It didn 't taste that good , but it was food and that 's what counted , so I finished my portion until nothing was left . When I was done I washed my plate and went back to where Matt was . He 'd finished already and let me take the plate and glass away without a word . I realized , surprised , that I 'd given him a fork this time , but he didn 't try and stab me with it or anything , even though his arms were basically free . He just stared straight ahead , rubbing his hurt cheek softly and wiping away the dried blood on his chin which had been there all the while he 'd been tied up . I bound him again quickly and left him there , going back up to the upper floor as soon as I could . I wandered aimlessly for the rest of the evening . I couldn 't concentrate , and I simply didn 't feel good with myself . I admired Matt 's fighting spirit , but I 'd played dirty and it burned . Last night on the beach , he 'd have won if I hadn 't lucked out with the gun . He was a good rival . I didn 't want to just win like this . I tried to watch some more TV ; couldn 't focus . Tried reading a book but I gave up after I 'd spent an hour on the same first page . When I realized it was almost time to sleep I grudgingly went back down to untie Matt so he could go to the bathroom . He saw me coming , but again he gave me the silent treatment . " I 'll untie you so you can go upstairs to the bathroom , " I said as I loosened the knot on the rope . " Don 't try any more stuff like you did in the morning or we 're going to have a problem . I mean it . " When he was free , Matt stood up slowly . He rubbed his arms , his legs , and stretched every which way with slow , methodical motions . He didn 't once look at me . When he was done , he went upstairs and I followed . He went right into the bathroom and shut the door behind him . I didn 't protest . I heard the sound of flushing soon after , and then heard him brushing his teeth . A few minutes later he came out and went back down with me having to tell him anything . He headed right for his chair and sat down . Matt stared straight ahead and ignored me . He even assumed the position so I could tie him up more easily . Shrugging , I did it , as quickly as I could . His silence made me feel bad , and I missed all the insults and tricks he 'd tried to pull on me before . I wanted him to fight ; I wanted another chance to prove that I could best him on equal ground . Lying on his bed , I tossed and turned for a long time , trying to sleep . I simply couldn 't . The steady drone of the rain didn 't lull me to sleep like the day before . I was too uneasy , my mind too conflicted for me to sleep . I ended up going back to the couch and watching TV until late at night , at which point I fell asleep right there , the TV still on . At some point the remote dropped from my hand . The next morning came too soon . I yawned , remembering where I was right away this time . The rain had let up somewhat , but it was still falling . I stood up and glanced at the alarm clock in Matt 's room as I passed by . It was ten thirty . No wonder I 'd woken up all sore and stiff - I 'd spent ten hours on that couch . As I took a piss in the bathroom I thought about how sore Matt must be after an entire day in that chair . I had to think of another way , another place to put him . I couldn 't keep him down there forever . Going downstairs , I saw Matt was still asleep in the chair . He looked peaceful as he slept , and disarmingly attractive , too . The bruise on his cheek was more noticeable today , and the shadow of his beard was darker today , giving him a haggard appearance that I liked . I approached him quietly , trying not to wake him up . " I 'll untie you for a bit , " I told him . It was almost routine this time . I untied him , he stretched , massaging his muscles thoroughly . Then he went up to the bathroom while I followed and was in there for a while . A long while , actually . Eventually I heard the water running and knew he was taking a shower . That was unexpected but I decided to let him . I needed a shower myself . When he came out nearly half an hour later , he was freshly shaven and wore only a towel around his waist . It was the first time I 'd seen his bare chest and I couldn 't help staring . His pecs looked rock - hard and were clearly outlined against his smooth , pale skin . His nipples were two round , perfect circles , a bit darker than the surrounding skin , and slightly furry with twin short , dark patches of hair that ran lengthwise and met at his sternum . He had powerful - looking shoulders , well - defined and obviously gym - sculpted . His arms were big - probably about as big as mine . There was a scar on his left forearm which I hadn 't seen before : three parallel marks , wide and nasty - looking . They looked like claw marks , but I couldn 't be sure . I hadn 't really noticed when he 'd had his clothes on , but Matt was really ripped . I felt a throb of desire for him that I tried to hide by backing away from him a bit . I wished he 'd try to punch me , or tackle me , or something . He did no such thing . " Sure . Go ahead , " I said , letting him through , disappointed and a bit hurt that he didn 't even think it was worth fighting me anymore . Matt nodded and went into his room . He didn 't close the door this time , and I couldn 't help following , looking into the bedroom from the hallway as he changed . I told myself I was checking on him so he wouldn 't try anything again , but what I really wanted to do was watch him . I couldn 't help it - he was hot , attitude or not . He dropped the towel with his back to me , opening his closet and offering me a full sight of his smooth , round ass . I couldn 't tear my eyes from it , and even got a glimpse of Matt 's hole when he bent over to pick up the towel . I was getting a raging hard - on in my pants , and I had to adjust my crotch with my hand so the bulge wouldn 't show so much . Not that Matt was looking my way . He was busy getting some clean clothes out of the closet . I watched him get dressed , my eyes missing little as he put on clean boxers , a pair of jeans , and finally a T - shirt that fit him snugly . He had a powerful - looking back , a perfect V - shape that led down from his wide , muscled shoulders to his narrow waist . Every muscle was well - defined , which told me Matt worked out regularly , and hard . If I hadn 't known any better , I 'd have guessed he was a bodybuilder from the way his body was sculpted . When he finally turned around , fully dressed , I stepped back . I was sure my boner was painfully obvious from where I stood . Matt 's gaze didn 't linger on me long , though . His sullen attitude was still there , and he headed back downstairs , sat on his chair , and waited for me to tie him up . " You can walk around a bit if you like , " I told him , standing nearby . " I 'm not keeping you tied up to that chair any more than I have to . As long as we 're in the same room and you don 't get wise again , you can move ; just don 't get too close to me and don 't pick anything up that could be a weapon . " At first he didn 't react , but then he looked at me with a mixture of mild surprise and suspicion . He stood up experimentally ; I backed away and sat at the table further back , next to the door to the kitchen . I had my gun out , just in case . It was an awkward couple of hours . Neither of us could really relax , waiting for the other to make a move or do something dangerous ; in the end , Matt voluntarily sat back down on his chair , silently telling me to tie him up again . I did it and left him there to prepare breakfast . This time the eggs I made ended up tasting worse than the ones I 'd made the day before . The rest of the day passed by in a tired , grinding blur . Matt wouldn 't talk to me . I didn 't have anything to do . I kept fighting with myself over what I was doing , feeling worse with every hour that passed , and Matt 's stubborn silence made it worse . It made me angry ; it made me uneasy . I watched some TV , tried to read again . I was bored , and getting angrier by the second , and also feeling uncomfortable with myself . Even that time I 'd killed the man who 'd shot my grandfather I hadn 't felt this bad . That time I had fought back in self - defense , a fair fight . This time I was just being an asshole . But there was nothing to be done about it and Matt and I kept to the routine , and come night I untied him again for a couple of hours . I offered to set him up in his own bed for the night and this time he accepted . I had to get creative to tie him up there , but I managed . I could tell he was much , much more comfortable lying on his back after so long on the stupid chair . I even caught a look in his eyes that might have been gratitude , but it was gone too quickly for me to be sure , to be replaced by sullen apathy . I set up Matt back in the chair for the day , made breakfast . We ate it . After that I just couldn 't take the silence anymore . I felt like I was going insane . " There 's almost no food left , " I said . Matt looked at me , his eyes darting to my face and back down . At first I thought he wouldn 't answer , but he did . Matt shook his head in a tired gesture . " No , Sven . The boat 's most likely long gone in all that rain . You didn 't let me tie it up to secure it , remember ? " Matt sighed . " I don 't know . I just . . . What do you want from me , Sven ? You come into my house , wreck everything , and now all of a sudden you have a change of heart and you want to help ? What 's the matter with you ? " " That boat was important to me , in case you didn 't notice . It 's not only the only practical means of transportation I have between this house and the town - it 's part of my livelihood . My father gave me that boat before he died . Now it 's probably lost out at sea , the supplies gone with it , and all because of you . So forgive me if I 'm suddenly suspicious of your good - natured offer to go look for it . " " I know . I screwed up , okay ? I didn 't think this through . But if there 's a chance that boat 's still out there , I 'll go out and look . We need those supplies , and I do want to help . " Matt looked steadily into my eyes . A bit of the old anger was coming back into his look , replacing the apathy . I was glad . " Then I 'll come with you . " " You wouldn 't even know where to look . I know the waters around these parts . I know where the boat 's most likely to have washed up onto the shore , if it ever did . " I hesitated , but only for an instant . Matt 's claim was fair . I 'd have to take my chances - and I was tired , too . Tired of this whole kidnapping thing , the constant wariness , the feelings of regret . This wasn 't who I was . My grandfather would have been ashamed of me to see me behave like this . I was done with it . Done . I realized it with sudden , relief - tinged clarity . If I could help , I would . . . and when we came back , I 'd let Matt go . He 'd decide what to do about me then . First , though , we had to get that boat back . Matt looked at me warily , and at the gun in my belt . He seemed about to say something , but he thought better of it and simply stood up . He rubbed the places where the rope had dug into his skin . I hadn 't really had a chance to look at the place on the night I 'd come here ; I 'd only seen rocks , the beach and the house . Now the air was clear , the sky a uniform shade of light grey , the sun partially hidden by lingering clouds . The sea mirrored the color of the sky , with small , choppy waves that broke the surface of the water everywhere I looked , stirred by the brisk morning wind . Under the light of day I could truly see where the house stood , the forest just beyond , the bay and the sea all around us . The view was simply breathtaking . The house was set on the tip of a narrow strip of land , the very tip of which was raised a few feet above sea level on a low , rocky cliff that quickly fell down to the rocky beach on either side of the miniature peninsula . The house stood at the highest point on the low cliff , well above the reach of the waves and protected on three sides by a semicircular stone barrier that kept the spray away from the building . Further down , the land widened as it reached the forest just beyond , and it got lost in the maze of solid green that stretched left and right as far as the eye could see , maybe half a mile away . The forest rose and fell with the lay of the land further back , with rolling low hills covered with evergreens set in the distance . To the right of the house , the bay was clearly visible , the gentle curve of the coast dotted with rocks and pebbles , with tall pines and other trees growing just a few feet away from the rocky shore . Far away , at the other end of the bay , a tiny concentration of blocks marked the town , several miles away . To the left there was only sea and the shoreline receding into the distance , with several low hills dotting the horizon further inland . I followed Matt as he walked down to the beach , his footsteps crunching in the rock - strewn sand of the beach . A couple broken - down logs had been washed up on the sand , bleached white and smooth by long exposure to the elements . I looked out over the sea , trying to spot the boat somewhere . There was no sign of it above the waves . " This way , " Matt said , walking purposefully towards the mainland . There was a break in the curve of the bay where a few large boulders were strewn around , blocking the view . A large tree had been torn out by its roots in the heavy rain , the soil on which it had stood washed away in the downpour . The tree had fallen sideways onto the rocks , part of it submerged , part of it sticking out above the boulders . A strong current swirled around it , apparently , because the half - submerged branches kept whipping back and forth under the force of the water . " There , at the river mouth , " Matt said , pointing at the boulders . " That 's the most likely spot . " As we approached I saw the river Matt spoke of . It was not visible from the house , but once we got closer I saw that there was , indeed , a river emptying out into the sea at the mouth of the bay . It wasn 't a large river , but it looked deep . Its course was flanked by trees on either side , and it got lost into the forest beyond . The rain had made the river swell to the point where it had flooded its banks , which explained the uprooted tree . Several of the large boulders framed the river mouth on our side , and on the other side as well . Where the river met the sea , visible eddies disturbed the flow of the water . The fallen tree lay right across the middle of the river , resisting the flow of the current - and tangled in one of its massive branches was the boat . " Yes ! " Matt exclaimed , vaulting over a boulder to get a closer look . The boat was there , but overturned . Any supplies it might have carried would have long since been lost under the waves . " How do we get it ? " I asked Matt , approaching carefully . The boulders were still wet , and the river looked deep - and cold . The boat was way out of reach , nearly the entire tree length away from the shore . " I 'll swim there , " Matt said . " Get it back . I just need to turn it over . " Matt kicked of his shoes and took off his pants . " You said you wanted to help ? When you see me turn it over help me tow it back to shore . You don 't need to go in the water . Just pull it in when it 's close . " Matt nodded , turned for the water , and dove in . Some of the water splashed in my face - it was cold . Really cold . I wondered how long Matt would manage to be in that freezing water . That boat must be really important to him . I watched him swim with deft , powerful strokes downriver until he reached the tree . It took him maybe two minutes , fighting against the current . The boat was tangled on the other side of the trunk , so he had to dive under it to reach it . I saw him take a huge breath and then disappear under the water . He was too far away for me to make out his shape well , but after ten seconds had passed I saw the white hull of the boat begin to sway back and forth in long , rocking motions as if someone was tugging at it from below . I counted to fourteen before Matt surfaced , sputtering . He took another gulp of air and dove back down . I saw the boat begin to rock a little more vigorously and wondered if should go over there and help . I owed it to him , I guessed . . . rather reluctantly , I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my socks . The rocky beach was cold under my feet . I was unbuckling my belt when I saw the boat being rocked much harder and faster than before from below . A burst of bubbles broke the surface of the water , and the boat began to float away , free from whatever branch had snagged it , going out to sea . Matt had done it , even without my help . But he wasn 't coming up . " Matt ? " I called . No answer but more bubbles and a violent disturbance below the surface of the water . I took off my shirt and pants hurriedly . I counted all the way to twenty , and Matt wasn 't coming out . The disturbance below the water ceased abruptly . The cold was like a kick in the face . It numbed me , confused me , and for a second I lost my bearings . The brackish water stung my eyes , and I had to surface to orient myself . Then I saw the tree , and I dove back in , swimming with quick , strong breaststrokes right for the spot I 'd seen Matt last . I looked around in the water , forcing my eyes open , but all I saw was murky water everywhere . I began to get anxious . I 'd forgotten all about the cold by the time I swam up to the tree trunk . Several branches were underwater , jagged and broken . I felt my way around , saw a dark shape below me and gasped with surprise , but I was running out of air and I had to surface . I kicked up and broke the surface , coughing and gasping , and dove again . I headed straight for the dark shape , not six feet away . It was Matt . His shirt had gotten stuck in one of the branches , and he 'd tried to free himself unsuccessfully . He wasn 't moving when I got to him . I yanked the shirt free , having to tear the branch off the tree to do so , and pulled him up , using all my strength to kick up fast , my lungs burning for air . I saw the surface right above us , and I took a large gulp of air as soon as my head was out of the water . Matt didn 't react , though , and he was heavy . The current was strong at the mouth of the river , too , and I had no way to swim against it with Matt in tow . I panicked for an instant , shivering , now beginning to feel the cold in earnest , until I saw the boat floating several feet away . It was down the current from us , easy to reach . I just had to turn it over . I kicked off the tree with all my strength , keeping Matt 's head above the water . I 'd never swum carrying someone and using only one arm , and it was hard . My muscles were burning with the effort of keeping a steady course by the time I reached the boat , and I had to let go of Matt to dive under the water , grab the side of the boat and heave it up with the little strength I had left . It resisted - it was heavy . Really heavy . I realized with a sinking heart that I wouldn 't be able to turn it over on my own , much less pull Matt aboard after I 'd done it . I abandoned the boat and grabbed Matt out of the water again . I used the boat as leverage to keep us afloat and clapped him of the back , hard . " Wake up ! Damn it , Matt , wake up ! " I didn 't know if it was possible to give mouth - to - mouth with the person still floating around in the water , but I had to try . I pinched Matt 's nose shut , braced him against the boat and put my lips over his mouth . I breathed into him , hard , pushing the air in . Then I did it again . Matt was turning blue . On the third try Matt vomited out sea water , coughing it out everywhere . His eyes snapped open and he looked around , confused . Then he took another shaky breath in and coughed up some more water . He was shivering from the cold , his teeth chattering . He looked at me , then at the boat , confused . " Can you swim ? " I asked him . " Matt . Can you swim ? " I repeated , holding his head in my hands . He nodded jerkily . I pointed back to shore . " Let 's go . Lean on me . " I grabbed him with my left arm and used my right to swim forward , back to the shore . The current had carried us out into the sea disturbingly fast , and even with Matt helping , swimming as much as he could , it took us more than fifteen minutes to make it back to the shallow end of the bay . As soon as my feet hit bottom I stood up , wading through the water , Matt leaning heavily on me . I was panting , not sure if I was sweating or shivering or both at the same time . My clothes and my gun were back by the tree , but I left them there . I had to get Matt to the house . " Upstairs , " I said , my bare feet slipping on the floor at one point . Matt helped right me up . He nodded , and we climbed together , right for the bathroom . Matt guessed what I wanted to do and got into the shower as I turned on the hot water to full blast . His torn shirt clung to his body , and I helped him take it off . We were left in our underwear , shivering together in the shower . Then the hot water hit with its blessed , near - scalding touch . I 'd never been so thankful for hot water in my life . My own violent shaking stopped as the water fell on my skin , and I held Matt close to me to warm him . I wasn 't thinking of anything when I did it ; it just seemed the natural thing to do . His skin felt cold to the touch , and he shivered slightly in my arms until , little by little , he too stopped shaking . As the water warmed us back and both of us regained our senses , though , I became conscious of the fact that Matt was practically naked next to me , and I stepped back to give him some space . I avoided his eyes and turned around under the pretext of warming my back under the hot spray of water . In truth I didn 't want him to see the hard - on that was suddenly tenting my boxers . I heard Matt take a shaky breath behind me . " What happened ? " he asked . " I remember getting tangled in that branch . . . then swimming . . . " " You were stuck trying to free the boat , " I said . I was busy fiercely focusing on a random , non - sexual thought - shoveling manure from the stables back in the farm - until my erection subsided . I turned around when it had gone down , to look at Matt . Bad move . His ripped body was less than an arm 's length away , the water running down his smooth skin . My dick stirred again , but I was distracted by the look in his eyes . It was different from any other look he 'd given me since I 'd pulled a gun on him . He seemed . . . surprised . But in a good way . " You pulled me out , " he said , his voice nearly a whisper . Almost as if he were admitting it to himself . " You took me back up . " I nodded . " You had passed out in the water when I found you . I tried taking you to the boat , but it was too heavy to overturn . " Matt nodded slowly . " It is . I 'm surprised you managed to get me out at all . . . thank you , Sven . You . . . you saved my life . " He said it as though the words surprised even him . " I would have died there if it hadn 't been for you . " I blinked . I hadn 't thought of it that way . Matt looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time then . I saw his eyes go over my mostly - naked body , and then look back into my eyes , an intense and new expression on his face . I ran a hand over my beard , nervous under his scrutiny , which was weird ; I was never nervous with a guy . The bathroom was full of steam from the hot water , and I couldn 't shake the thought off that he was so damn close to me . I felt my dick begin to get hard again . I took a long , deep breath . I had to say it - now was the time to come clean . " I 'm sorry about what I did , Matt . I was an asshole . I 'm sorry I 've kept you tied up these last few days . It was a cowardly thing to do and I 'm ashamed of myself for giving in to the fear of getting caught so badly that I ended up becoming a criminal . I don 't expect you to forgive me but I want you to know I won 't try anything else again . I just can 't live with myself knowing I 'm becoming more like the scum that killed my grandfather , harming people unprovoked . So I 'm done . You can call the cops and you 'll be rid of me in no time . They can help you get your boat back if you 're quick ; it 's still within reach , I believe . Tie me up while they come so you 'll know I won 't try and get away . And again , I 'm sorry . " I turned off the hot water . There was a long , drawn - out silence while Matt and I looked at each other , sizing the other one up . I 'd meant every word of what I 'd said , and I hoped Matt would see it in my eyes . I really was done being a criminal . " Okay , " Matt said at last , hesitant , wary . " Dry yourself and I 'll tie you up in the bedroom . " Once we were dry , I walked into Matt 's bedroom and lay down on the bed , holding my hands above my head . I was still naked . Matt came in with the rope , tossed me a pair of clean boxers which I put on , and then he bound my hands to the bedposts expertly , and then did the same with my feet . I didn 't resist him . I could tell he was really surprised I 'd gone through with my word , but his knots were firm . Now I couldn 't get away even if I tried . |
I recognize that I have such a phrase , catch myself saying it and know I 'm repetitive with it . The phrase is " AT ANY RATE " . I seem to use it at the end of , or to end , a conversation or discussion . I realize I say it and have often wondered if others were aware of my repetitive use of it . Apparently I have another phrase that is common for me . " IT IS WHAT IT IS " . My use of this phrase was pointed out to me by my brother . He saw a canvas in the store with this phrase on it and debated about getting it for me for Christmas . I didn 't get the canvas , but I did get a large ceramic hand making the " OK " sign . I like it , and have it front and center on my bookcase . It reminds me that even on the worst of days , I 'm OK . I like that feeling and the constant reminder , so thanks to my brother for the gift that keeps on giving . After listening to people complain about cold feet I decided socks were in order for this year . Thirteen pairs . The sizes ranged from my brother 's size thirteen to my granddaughter 's size 3 . Some of the patterns were the same , though the yarns differed . The one pattern I made the most was one that had a lacy pattern , for the ladies , and bonus , had no heel but was done as a sort of tube sock , so easier to ensure a good fit . I 'll be hard pressed to come up with something new for next year , though I joked with the little ones that maybe I should make matching underwear , to keep everyone warm . That idea didn 't go over well , they thought it might be too itchy . I 'm still thinking . I made my daughter a mermaid , and , as she loves the beach , it was fitting . I made my son a bear , as he 's country thru and thru . I 'm talking those afghan things that are enclosed at the foot . The ice fell off the windshield with one good push and the rest was easy . Off I went to finish my last minute errands . Three stops later I struggled to get everything in the door . I had dropped the toilet paper twice from the car to the door , and frustrated let it fall inside the door and kicked it out of my way . Ouch , Ouch , Ouch . Not the thing to do with the foot I hurt on the weekend . Lily , the dog I was sitting , continues to haunt me . I got up early Sunday to let the dog out and smashed my foot into the table leg , right between the 4th and 5th toes . Lot 's of bruising and pain . Figured I might have broken the little toe , but what would they do ? But Lily , that sly bitch , would stand by the door and wait for me to let her out , anticipating her reward when she came back . This time I noticed that she sometimes makes a quick ( it is 10 below Celsius ) circle and returns , making no stop to pee , doesn 't even try to fake it for the gullible person , me , standing at the door . I have created a Cookie Monster . I woke suddenly yesterday , early in the morning with a dog staring me in the face . Obviously she wanted out . I was slow moving , told Lil that she had to hold it as my needs took precedence . I hurried out of the bathroom and stumbled into the table , catching the large square leg between my 4th and fifth toe . Ouch , ouch , ouch . Today , after walking to the curb to set my garbage out , my foot aches like mad . I don 't think I 'll be going too far for a few days at least . And , as Lily is back home with her family , I don 't have the frequent trips to the door . I got waylaid with some Christmas baking . Made those peanut butter marshmallow squares I posted about before , and gave a tasty preview to the kids , and was delighted to see their faces light up . Anything with peanut butter is sure to be a family favorite . I was searching the recipes on Pinterest and found an easy one for Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge . I made it yesterday and it was easy , and very tasty . My son and his family were here before my granddaughter 's indoor soccer game , and the fudge definitely passed the taste test . That was when I realized my phone was out . I ignored it until Monday when I called the company . did all the things they recommended and still no phone . I decided to check again , and found that the junction box for the cord , like an extension cord , was loose . so there was the problem . I may tape these connections , as the joiner is behind my sofa and not an easy reach . And , oddly enough , I have the ingredients in my cupboard . They are very simple , peanut butter , butterscotch ships and mini colored marshmallows . They are simple and sooooo good . Melt 1 12oz bag of butterscotch chips with 1 cup peanut butter . Remove from heat , stir in 1 bag of miniature marshmallows . Pour into a 9x13 inch pan and place in refrigerator until cool . Cut into squares . I noticed that some bags of marshmallows are smaller than others and it makes a difference , because you have too much of the sauce , not that it 's not tasty , but it works better to have the right amount . I got this recipe from the Camborne Public School fundraiser cookbook , from 1982 . So many of my old friends submitted recipes that I 've enjoyed over the years . His parents sold their house this summer , and decided to distribute a great deal of their belongings to their three boys . This included Christmas ornaments . So , as ornaments were unpacked , there was talk of who gave him the ornaments , most often his Nana . Grandmothers must like giving ornaments , as I have contributed a large number of the ones on my daughter 's tree . About 11 years ago I decided to make the kids an ornament every year , decorations they could have for their first tree as an adult . A great number include photos , so it generated a lot of fun and laughter . I had to go back , to start from the beginning , but it wasn 't too bad as I just needed one for every year 1998 to 2000 . Then in 2001 I needed two per year , then quickly , three , four , five and then six . A couple years ago the count became 7 , and the families are complete , and as the kids have a number of ornaments . I decided last year . . . was my last . Besides , the trees are awfully full . Instead of a star , he had a figurine of Gordie Howe , for the top of the tree . That was very apropos , as the tree is a true reflection of the family . And a beautiful one at that . When I was a single parent , a working nurse , I had to work weekends and holidays . At the time , my parents were wintering in Florida and my brother lived in the city . But my ex had a big family that all came home for Christmas , aunts , uncles , cousins , grandparents and great grandparents . That had been our holiday go - to place since the kids had been born . Christmas is not just a day , it is a season , a month long celebration . So the kids and I did everything in party mode . I made snacks and special treats , put on a Christmas movie or music for tree decorating . Gift wrapping was something else we did together , with snacks again . So , I got the call from the spa , Velma was ready to come home . It turned out her few days away did wonders for her disposition , she has lost the whine , the squeak the whatever . And my bill for her stay was less than fifty dollars , so win / win . It 's good to have my girl back , to have that sense of freedom that I can go anywhere I want , when I want . I did get a few things done while I was home . Some crafts , some reading , but , alas , not the laundry . It 's mind over matter , I know . When you don 't have the car there are suddenly all these things you need , places you need to go . Not really . A few years ago , in the dead of winter , my car decided to take on a cantankerous and uncooperative nature . My way of sucking up to her was to try and get on her good side , by buying her a new battery . Seemed to work for awhile . For the last few weeks , Velma has been making her discontent very clear . . . with a loud whining noise . Not all the time , just when making sharp turns . Maybe a bit of joint pain , and if so I can sympathize . But this week , I 'm really touched . He read my story about his uncle that was published in Chicken Soup for the Soul : The Joy of Christmas . He was first , impressed that my story appeared in a real book , and second , liked the story . This happened to me when I gave a book I had just finished to a friend to read . " Why did you change the dog 's name ? " she asked when she returned the book . I remember writing after a break away from it and obviously renamed the dog . I did look up the neighbor 's name in my notes when it didn 't come to mind . I believe there is a person in the movies and television whose job it is to look for those little bits that don 't fit , that break up the continuity of a scene . It can happen easily if you knew the way shows and movies are made . Scenes are not filmed in the order they appear in the finished product . The one today has Detective Deeks gunned down in what was first thought to be a store robbery . They quickly realize he was not an innocent bystander , but was the intended victim . When they tried to figure out who had it ' in ' for poor Marty , the comment was made he had no next of kin listed . Turns out he did have a father , not the best of dads as Marty shot him when he was a kid . I didn 't get what reference might have been made about his mother . But moving forward , there 's a show where Deeks introduces Kensi to his mother . It would appear they had a close relationship , so where was she when he got shot ? Continuity . Same show , not a character 's history this time . A woman Callin knew from his CIA days comes back seeking help . They set her up to meet a rogue CIA agent , at the beach . Being a suspicious kind of guy , he has her walk into the water , to short out any listening device . She would have been the winner in any wet T shirt contest , as was obvious with the comments Deeks made . But only moments later , she shoots the bad guy , and lo and behold , her shirt is dry . I know it 's hot in California , but I don 't think clothes would dry that fast . Basically , Shannon found her family was getting a little too self involved . They only seemed to care about their own tasks and concerns . She started a family journal in which each member of the family was to document a good deed they had done each day . Good deeds are contagious . And I can see this in my own life . Last week my brother went to a great deal of effort to take me to an out of town doctor 's appointment . We had a good day , a lot of laughs , but still , he did a massive amount of driving , in what was not the best weather . Today I spoke to my 89 year old neighbor , and found her sick with a chest cold . I immediately decided to make her soup , ( must have chicken soup on the brain ) but though I had chicken , I didn 't have vegetables . I settled for tuna casserole and made muffins , from a mix to keep it simple . She was very appreciative , and a bit overwhelmed . She has children , but they do not live local , and as she doesn 't drive , she can often feel isolated and confined . I frequently take her to the store with me , and save her the difficulty of taking the bus , or the cost of a taxi . I was not expecting , when I gave her the goodies today , that she would burst into tears . I know how upsetting it can be to feel alone and be sick . Everyone needs that bit of special attention , that caring , that tells them they are not alone . Bill took over the legal and financial end , while Amy became editor . To begin , she immersed herself in the stories previously published and she admits the process changed her . She says in the introduction that she became " more compassionate and less judgmental ; more grounded and grateful for everything . . . ; and way more knowledgeable about what makes people tick . " I almost read the book in one sitting , finally having to put it down because it was late into the night . As I read , I recognized things that mirrored my own life , or the life of a loved one . There were chapters I immediately wanted to share , as the words so clearly expressed my feelings or thoughts . I 'm late again this week , ( for posting ) but for good reason . Yesterday was a long day , more so for my brother . He came down from the city and we drove further east , a road trip for sure , ending at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston where I had a doctor 's appointment . As our usual lunch spot , usually on a Tuesday , was in Wild Wings , we stopped in Belleville and had lunch . . . at the Wild Wings there . Must say , not up to the usual standard we were used to . Food was good , but the service with a smile was lacking , plus the personal attention we 've come to expect and enjoy . I had my map book , but we got confused , more accurately , I got confused as I was navigator , with one way streets . We ended up following the blue hospital signs , which led us directly to Kingston General . Oops , wrong hospital . You have to love technology . He called his wife , working downtown Toronto , and asked her to look up the address for us . She googled it and we were good to go . It was so exciting to see the delivery truck pull up outside my door . I just knew it had to be the copies of " Chicken Soup for the Soul " with my Christmas story . Not only do I get paid for the story , but I get 10 free copies . I already posted about my road trip , and would love to take another . If I want to go back and take pictures of things I saw along our route , I 'll need my son to draw me a map . Once we passed the lake , I was basically lost . ( So was he for a short time . LOL ) Turkey sandwiches for one . Nothing tastes better the day after than turkey sandwiches . I had dinner at my daughter 's , and she kindly gave me enough for a sandwich yesterday . It tasted so good . Still feel like I 'm owed a piece of pumpkin pie though . It 's also apple picking season . I don 't make pies like I used to , or homemade apple sauce , so I buy apples one or two at a time , just for eating . I was shocked when told a bushel of apples cost about $ 25 . My son said he had this fantastic place to show me , so we drove , and drove . We were going through some nice wooded country , on the usual kind of semi paved country roads . There was the odd scattered house , lots of farms , and lots of trees . Most of all there was just Mother Nature 's fall show . At one point I asked my son if he knew where he was , where we were heading , and , of course , he said yes . But then we hit a dirt road , followed by a dead end . We turned around and went back the way we 'd come . I was okay with that as , this time , we stopped so I could get a picture of this old house . There was also a suspension bridge that crosses this river . The floor of it is mesh , and you can see through it . When someone walks on it you can feel the change , the bounce . I only went out a couple of feet , felt dizzy and nauseated , and quickly went back to solid land . No way could I go across the whole bridge . The last few times I have been in the car , I 've heard the strangest noises from the back , but never bothered to investigate , until today . I was sitting in the car , outside the lab , waiting for my friend . I 'd heard the noise again and checked out the back seat , and guess what I found . Sometimes when I have been out , and missed lunch , I grab a Happy Meal . Just a quick meal to get me through ( I know , I know , a terrible choice ) . This was the toy that came with the last one , which I gave to one of the grandkids when we were out a week ago . They left it , turned on , in the cup holder of the back seat , resting on its belly , so every time it bounced , it hit the button and said " Oh Yeah ! " There was my noise , so now all I have to worry about is the squeak that Velma makes when I back up . I still see a spa trip in her future . She told me about these dreams , and I was going to do some dream research , but didn 't get to it . Yesterday , she told me she hasn 't had the dream since she 'd told me about it . Talking about it stopped the cycle . Glad I could help by listening . The funny thing with dreams , at least for me , is I have a hard time remembering them once I am fully awake . I dreamed about my Mom the other night . Can 't remember all the details , but I was there , going up and down in a elevator , carrying or moving something , and she was outside the elevator door with a clipboard . Keeping count ? Of what ? The dream has faded and I can 't remember the details , except for that look on my mother 's face . You know that look , every mother has had it at one time or another . That half grin , half smirk , that tells you that you 've been caught , and she , the all powerful Mother , knows it all . Now I just have to figure out what I was doing wrong , that Mom was trying to tell me to stop . Maybe I need to do that dream research after all . Thanks Mom , I guess . My granddaughter , who turned twelve yesterday , was two years old when I lived with them . If the basement door was closed , the girls were to leave me alone . But that didn 't suit this little one . She would leave the house and stand at my garden doors , peering in , knocking , and calling to me . She spent a lot of time with me then , and later after I moved out . We spent a lot of time baking , so it was not a surprise that for this birthday , she requested I make her a cake . Specifically a chocolate cake with white icing . I have a table just inside the door , with a large stone angel statue . There is just enough room at the base for me to place my glasses and my car keys , and keep them handy . It is very rare for me to break from that habit . Habits . When you change the routine , it changes everything . I must have set the keys down as usual , then hurried to put the groceries away , still wearing the glasses . I should be wearing the glasses all the time , for distance , like for watching television . But , I never wear them at home . too much bother as I can 't wear them for craft work . I have a pair of bifocals , but they stay by the bed . I loved the challenge , and thank the two of them for the inspiration . It was fun , writing a book from the title only . Usually I struggle for a title after the book is done . The kitchen was long and narrow , running the full length of one side . The dining room was really big , with a large picture window looking out to the river . The walls were covered in that same dark wood , with a plate rail on the top . I remember my grandparents to be loving and creative . From my grandmother I got a love of needle crafts , like sewing and crochet . From my grandfather it was the arts , painting and photography . But , he is my ' little ' brother and can be a pest . He 's reminded me that I call my blog Midweek Musing , and yet I 'm not posting mid week . I seem to post when I have the time , an idea , or some divine inspiration . But , it was considered a No - No to eat the dough , because of the raw eggs . That 's another of those rules that change over time . My Dad used to make an energy drink of eggs , banana , and milk with a sprinkle of wheat germ , and though he didn 't live a long life , it was an active one , and the raw eggs he 'd eaten years before had no part in his demise . Combine peanut butter and milk chocolate chips . In microwave , heat for 30 seconds , stir , repeat at 10 second intervals until melted and smooth . Pour over dough and chill . I changed the recipe a bit , omitted the M & Ms , and used only milk chocolate chips . If I made them again I would use mini chips , whether it was semi sweet , milk chocolate , M & Ms or the Reeses ' mini chips , as it would be easier to bit into . They were tasty , and a good no bake recipe for hot summer days . First it was the dehumidifier . It was running , I could hear the continual drone of the fan , but then I realized I hadn 't emptied the bucket for days . So the fan works , but no dehumididfying . I got out the booklet , tried what was suggested , but no go . Yesterday I called the company , and they are only open Monday to Friday . With this hot weather and no air conditioning , I 've had the fans going all day and all night . Well , it was one fan , until my brother gave me one he 'd had in the garage . He has air conditioning . I got my file box out to find the dehumidifier booklet and decided to do my shredding . I have a cross cut shredder , and the directions say to oil the blades frequently . I only used it one time , filled a blue bag , and never oiled it once , so I figured I better oil it before I used it again . My son gave me a small container of oil , and I read the booklet to see how it was done , and it said vegetable oil . What ? Like canola oil ? I moved it once because it blocked my view of the television , but then it was in the way of the door . Last night it was in a place that meant I couldn 't see the score of the ball game . As I was crocheting at the same time , I need to glance at those stats to see where we are in the count . ' Might ' happened this morning . I was checking the thermometer and didn 't see the end of the cord and stepped on the plug . F * * K . I didn 't say it out loud , just repeated it in my head , as I did a fancy two step to prevent falling . I happened upon a rack of coats , maybe more fall than winter , but still . I liked the style , a full zipper plus snaps , four front pockets and a slit in the back for ease when sitting . I bought one in navy blue , so as to go with the jeans I am forever wearing . The old blue coat , soiled with a permanent brown on the cuffs , zipper broken . is gone . . . almost . At least it 's out of the closet , off the hangar . The new coat hung and ready for cooler weather . I guess I just answered my own question . I 'll toss it in the bin . If the bin managers decide it 's of no use , they can toss it , but I figure they have a better chance of getting it to the needy than I do . I remembered my daughter talking about the boxes and boxes of hockey cards they 'd found . The thing with all those cards , do you keep them all , save just your favorites , and what about value ? There could be some valuable cards in those boxes . It took me two days , but I sorted those cards , first into brands : Score , O Pee Chee , Pro Set , and Upper Deck . I found some baseball and basketball cards mixed in as well . Second , I sorted each brand into individual years , as there 's a new design each year . I still don 't know what the years were , unless it was in large print on the card , the copyright was so small , my bifocals weren 't enough . Some years there were maybe 500 cards in the series , others more like 700 . I broke each year down and put cards in numerical order , looking for complete sets . Some were fairly intact , others missing large numbers of cards . I put everything back in the banker box , all neat and organized . It was still hot and humid , so I got another box , this time a big corrugated cardboard box with what looked like the cast offs of the collection . There were some really old card from when there were only ten teams ( now 30 , I think ) . They had been in a scrapbook , attached with a fold of masking tape , which ruined the back side of the card , I found a whack of cards that were missing from the cards I 'd sorted from the first box . I also found more baseball cards , and golf cards saved in plastic binder sheets . The collection is now organized and fills the banker box and a smaller box I had handy . It kept me sane over the last week when it was too hot to move , almost too hot to breathe . But I can 't sit still with nothing to do , and it seemed to hot to do anything . This was a mindless task , and I , at times , felt like I was playing cards with myself . I went to Metro , picked up a few items as I figured that would be the fastest way to get my garbage stickers , as I got no service at the ( haha ) service desk . Then , by the time I got to the cashier with my items , I forgot the stickers and had to go back in the store and stand in line . I paid for my stickers , and get this , had to go to the cashier at the service desk to get them . That 's some system . I met a friend for lunch and we tried out a different place , big mistake , sort of . Limited menu with lots of eggs , and no bacon , but lots of what I assume was sausage , in sauces that I can 't pronounce let alone know what they are . We ended up ordering burgers , very expensive burgers that came all alone on the plate , not even a pickle or slice of tomato . The beef was good , the cheese tasty , but the unknown sauce made the bun soggy . I went to the fabric store , looking for buttons , a no go . Tried Walmart , another no go . Now I 'm hot and tired and thirsty . So I decide to try the drive thru at McDonald 's for their dollar drink . " Pull into the shortest lane " which is exactly what I did . Service seemed slow in my aisle , but there was only one car ahead . I pull up at my turn and am totally ignored . I counted 4 cars that gave their order and moved on while I was sitting there . And once you 're there , with cars behind , you 're stuck . Finally a voice asked if I had placed my order , and I said no . Silence . Another car moved ahead from the other lane . I was fed up at this point , hot , and the car is overheating , so I pull out into the line . She offered to comp my order , and I declined . Said if they had a technical problem they should fix it or find a better way to work around it . It 's too hot to sit in line with the car running . Last bat , belongs to the home team . I didn 't realize that at first , then realized when the Jays had three home games , they always had last bat . I like it better that way , last chance opportunity , and all . I would get confused when the commentator would comment a batter was . . . say . . . 0 for 3 . I would be looking at balls and strikes and couldn 't figure out where I 'd lost count . Finally , I figured out they were talking about times up to bat . O for 3 meant no hits in three times up to bat . I 've learned a better appreciation for the skill needed to play this game . I 've watched players leap to catch a ball , turn in the air and throw it for an out . Amazing , really . Mom was in Week 2 of radiation treatment , and was seeing an oncologist for the first time . As I was in Florida , and would soon be returning to Canada , I needed to know what Mom 's status was . Being a nurse , I was given some professional courtesy , some frank talk . With my Mom , I can never think of this holiday weekend without remembering her and the day she died . Funny , how the events of August 2 still stand out so clearly in my mind . Some of that s guilt , because I never made it to Florida to say goodbye in person . My mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor in June , a secondary cancer , first being the lung . My brother and his wife were in Florida , helped her through the set up and scheduling of her radiation . My kids and I went in early July , and for a couple of weeks , taxied her to her treatments and to the oncologist . When we left , my sister took over for the next week . She was very weak , and it was like that old cartoon , " I 've fallen and I can 't get up " . She entered hospital on a Thursday . My brother and I , living in Canada , made arrangements to go back down , he on the holiday weekend , and me on the Wednesday after . This is where the guilt comes in . I was the in - charge / on - call person for three long term care facilities . My supervisor was returning to work after her holidays on Tuesday , August 2 , and I was planning to give her my report , go home , pack , and leave the next morning . While in my office , clearing my desk , the phone rang . It was my mother , calling from the hospital . She didn 't make a lot of sense , but the I love you 's came across clear and strong . My brother apologized for dropping such an emotional call on me at work , but Mom had insisted she speak with me and he felt it was better to call , to calm her down . Needless to say , I was an emotional wreck . I went to see my boss , who was also a friend , and she took over , taking care of everything . She took my plane ticket , called the airlines and changed my departure to that afternoon . She even arranged for a rental car to be available in Tampa when I landed . I held it together until we changed planes in Atlanta . When I was seated , waiting for take off , they played this video of all these lovely nature scenes , with appropriate music . I started to cry and couldn 't stop . A woman sitting across from me was very kind , and expressed some concern that I would be driving , late , and in what would be the dark , inland to where my mother lived . I admit it was a worry for me too . It was not to be a problem . As I was heading to the car rental booth , I heard my name called , and when I turned , there was my brother . I knew as soon as I saw him that I was too late . We had an interesting conversation as to how he finally learned I was on my way early . As his wife had arranged all our tickets , he knew when I was flying down , and when he called work , couldn 't understand why my boss kept saying I was already gone . I think their discussion got a little heated , understandable given the high emotions . And I remember and always appreciate the brother who has never let me down , and has always been there for me . Love you too , baby brother . Posted by There was always art in our house growing up . My mother was a gifted artist , mostly in oils in those younger years . Mom had a basement studio , and taught art lessons at home . Skipping forward , I realize I always did something creative , always self taught , always moving on to something new . I found my way back to painting , but not oils . I tried watercolors , was a dismal failure , then went on to mixed media collage , which is still my favorite medium . I play with other , what I guess are crafts , knitting , crocheting , and have diddled with ceramics , photography and jewelry making . I had always written poetry , and nine years ventured into more serious writing . Art and writing are my sanity , and I need them to stay steady . This week she attended a Paint Party . I guess you go , and as a group , are taken through the steps to creating a painting . Everybody doing the same painting , selecting their own colors , maybe putting a bit of their own flair into it . Sounds like more of a social event than a true art thing , but from all reports , everyone has a good time . I 'm sharing my daughter 's effort , which she couldn 't wait to share with me . It brought a tear to my eye , my daughter , the artist . Oddly enough , she 'd do it again , so maybe there is some artistic talent there , hidden all these years . I decided to make a few Loveys , baby blankets with a stuffed animal head . A snugglie and toy all in one . First it was a cat and a dog from the brown , then a cat in green . After that it was like I was on a quest . I dug out all my leftover yarn , mixed and matched colors , found a better pattern for making a teddy bear head , and I was on a tear . People say I should sell them , but that begs the question , where ? If I started to make some other things I might get enough made to do the round of bazaars in the fall , but that takes such effort . Not the creating , but the packing up , setting up a display , manning a booth , and dragging the leftovers back home . And did I mention , I have no storage space to spare . I create to create , to make things that make people happy , that they can use . If I make a few bucks at the same time , okay , but I don 't want to get involved in all this bazaar stuff again . Last time it wore me out , and as much as there seemed to be positive comments , I didn 't sell out . I have a bucket full of driftwood , soaking in a bleach / water solution , weighed down with a glass pie plate and the jug of bleach . I 've changed the water once already , and will do it one more time . The articles state this could take two weeks , but I 'm tired of sharing my shower with a bucket of wood . Right now , I just want to move forward , but even if the wood was ready I probably wouldn 't be doing much . It 's been real hot , the Humidex at 36 , which is stifling . It cools some at night , but not always a great deal . I have the fan going . It is no secret that I love art and crafts , something in which my daughter has never shown any interest . But , when I was at her place last week , she asked if I liked her craft work . Craft work , what craft work ? She pointed to the fridge , to the 4 little containers held by magnets , all in bright patterns and colors . " No " , she replied , " they came like that " . " So , where does the craft part come in ? " I wanted to know . It appears that she added the chalk board tags with the kids ' names , and that was her idea of crafting . Another way she crafts , is to show me something she likes and to let me make it . That is how I ended up making 13 pairs of slippers one year for Christmas . This time she showed me a flower design on what she says is driftwood . The design is made of different colors of rocks , glued to a wood base , not driftwood at all . " If you want to see driftwood " , I tell her , " go to Pinterest . I have a board on Driftwood " . " Of course you do " , she smirked . I have a board on almost anything . But on seeing what I had pinned to my board , she was enthusiastic about driftwood . We made plans to go to a certain beach near her to gather some wood . After we were done , I said I just needed a few of the longer pieces , as I 'm making dream catchers with her niece and nephew . I then found out she was only collecting driftwood for me , she had no intention of making anything . |
Husband got up rather early this morning . When he does that , you can bet your breakfast it 's going to be a rough day . It has already started . . . . . . . . . . Earlier in the week , I mentioned that I would like to detail the car before our trip . Just the usual stuff , washing , dusting the inside . Husband said he would help me . Tish came yesterday and we decided to go to the Goodwill store this morning . Husband was sitting with us when we decided on a time . Later , I told him again that I was going around 9 AM today . He gave me a blank stare and nodded . When he got up this morning , he said , " You better get ready , let 's do it before it gets too hot " . " Do what ? " , I ask . Looks at me like I 'm crazy ( now that , my friends , can be discussed at a later date ) , and says , " DETAIL THE CAR ? " " Oh , I am going to Goodwill , but if you want to do it , fine " . He says , " Well , you should 've told Tish that we ( ? ) ( I didn 't invite him to help me with the car ) had made other plans " . Now , most " normal " couples could have a really huge argument over this , but , in my world now ? Change the subject . It 's not worth it . So , I just said , " Well , there 's always tomorrow " , and leave it at that . It 's easier than the alternative . You 're not gonna win . I have told him many , many times that we are leaving Saturday . A few minutes ago he asks me what day are we leaving . Big sigh , " Saturday " . We have a 55 gallon fish tank . I am ging to get more fish food tomorrow . There is enough food to last until Monday , but need to get more . So , he panics and " reminds " me that " we " ( ? ) need to go get fish food , now . Ugh . All of these conversations have been taking place as I type this . Being the Mother of 7 children has taught me to multi - task . I can type , make sure the dog goes outside to do her business , check on my recordings for my TV programs for the day , listen to the dog bark outside at . . . . . nothing and solve problems that arise in the World of Dementia . My only saving grace ? I get to go to the Goodwill store . For about 2 hours . With my daughter . And a 2 yr old . Yay for me . How quiet my house is . Husband slept for the better part of the morning yesterday . Got up around noon and just walked around the house . Seemed confused . Didn 't say much . Patrick picked me up around 5 to go get my car from the mechanic . Had the Tune - up done for our trip to Colorado this weekend . Mechanic said the car is in good condition , just needed the tune - up . That 's good news , as this car has to last me for the rest of my life . No money to buy a new one . It 's a good car . On Monday , Tish followed me to the mechanic to drop off the car . Husband stayed home . Later , Tish came back and he started rambling about us taking the car in and we could just take the bus home . What ? I told him I already dropped the car off , and , that Patrick would take me to get it the next day . He just gave me a blank stare . Tish looked at him , then me , and walked away . This disease is taking control , I see it more and more now . It was OK for a few days last week , but , once again , when he seems to stabilize , that 's a warning of things to come . The deterioration of his brain is evident now . I am so glad that Jack isn 't here . It 's hard on him to see his Father this way . I can see the hurt in his eyes . He is in a place where there is just calm , relaxing , everyday " normal " stuff . He needs that right now . I , on the other hand , need my " alone " time . When husband sleeps alot during the day , I get some " alone time " , but knowing that my " alone time " is not normal when your husband sleeps for the better part of the day . I often think of places I could go , for the weekend , alone , and how I would so enjoy that . All that comes to a screeching halt when I see my husband wander around the house , in a confused state of mind . So , here 's to Wednesday . Half way through the week . Saturday , we leave for Colorado . It will be a beautiful drive up there . The scenery is just breathtaking . I look forward to that . Until then , I will take care of the here and now . I will watch husband decline more into another world . I will be strong , swallow hard when he asks me crazy questions . I will watch him as he sleeps , looking for signs of seizure activity . I will remind him about our trip Saturday . And , I will close my eyes and imagine the beautiful drive up to Colorado , with it 's peaceful mountains , trees , animals and think , " aahh " . Saturday , all gathered at my house for a BBQ . Anne ( my daughter in law ) and I went to Costco to get supplies . Now , it is very dangerous for me to go to Costco , add Anne , and you have some serious shoppers . We did some damage at Costco . When we got up to the check out , Anne said , " Oh , by the way , I 'm paying for all of it " . That 's Anne . So , I let her pay for it . When we first got there , she said , " We didn 't get you a birthday present , so , get whatever you want here " . First thing I saw was the Big Screen TV 's , then computers , then looked back at Anne . She had the look of , " Wait , what I meant was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " That made me laugh . The chaos was wonderful . Laughing , talking , eating great food , crying babies , laughing babies , entertaining , all of the above . Anne & Susie ( Tyler 's Fiance ) took pictures of all 7 of my children . As I sat there looking at them , I thought , " Man , that 's alot of people " . Everyone left around 10 : 30 Saturday night . It was so wonderful , I sat for the longest time and just re - lived the whole day . I was exhausted and thrilled at the same time . Justin & Anne left yesterday , taking Jack with them . He will stay until we go up there for the 4th . Next Tuesday we come home , bringing Jack back with us . I don 't know if he 'll want to come home . Tish is staying until the 23rd of July . Justin & Anne took me aside , separately and told me how awful husband looks now . I guess if you just read it in a post , you really don 't realize what 's happening . Then , you see it , and the reality of it all sets in . They both told me that I look tired and worn , but my attitude is good . Once they said that , I realized I am tired and worn . But I have to keep going . I have many cousins . One in particular , Linda , I have been close to all my life . Linda is married with 3 children , all grown with families of their own now . Her oldest , took his own life last October . Of course I knew about it , but I could not attend his funeral as all of my relatives are still out in Southern California , and we had just gotten back from our California trip . Because of my situation here at home , I never reached out to her . Well , I sent her an email the other day , she replied and it made me so sad . She is not doing well , he was her firstborn , they are still walking around asking , " why ? " Her heartbreak was screaming out to me in that email . I feel so bad for her . He left 4 children . The two older girls still sleep with his sweatshirts , the two younger ones won 't remember him . And it got me thinking . Will I be like that once husband passes ? She is a broken woman . I don 't want to be a broken woman . I want to move forward in my life , and cherish what I had . It scares me . I don 't want to hurt like she is hurting . Is it different when you have to bury your firstborn , regardless of his age ? I think it is . Especially the way he died , by his own hand . My husband has no choice , a death sentence was given to him , he didn 't ask for that . Early , early , this morning , before the sun was even up , husband was talking to " someone " . Carrying on a full conversation . Talking ever so softly , it was such a soft voice , one I had never heard before . I can 't describe it . I would like to think he was talking to his Mother . I like to think she is " around " him now , I feel her presence . When he joins her , I want to be strong . I will miss him , I will cry for him , I will tell the grandbabies about him , I will raise our son , I will grieve for him and all he went through . The weekends were great . Get the house cleaned , start the laundry , get groceries , have some great dinners on Saturday night , watch movies , and , still there was Sunday to look forward to . By Sunday night , I had had enough of this staying home thing , and was ready for a new week to begin . Wow , what a vast change from just a year ago . When I worked , I used to think about other wives and mothers ' who stayed at home , and thought , " that would be nice to be home all the time " . Ha , be careful what you ask for . The grass is not always greener on the other side . I quit work to be home with a husband who is dying . No sittin ' on the couch eating Bon Bons , no casual eating out , ( can 't afford it ) , no nothing . Instead , I have become a woman who now looks for signs of , seizures , falling , hallucinations , abnormal bleeding , having fits , dealing with a husband who acts like a 4 yr old , and dealing with my 16 yr old who is wise way beyond his years . What happened to me ? To us ? It all started when I did my research on the Internet about signs and symptoms of a terrific disease and ended in a Conference Room at UNM Hospital , with a Neurologist beginning with , " I am so sorry . . . . . . . . . . . . . " I post early in the morning . All is quiet , my mind goes places not possible the rest of the day . I think about everything . The past , the present and the future . The good times , bad times , happy times , sad times . I think about my family , my husband , my kids , my mother , sisters ' and brothers ' . I think about what the future holds for me . I worry financially . I make decisions , some I stick to , some I don 't . I picture myself alone , with all the kids out of the house and my husband gone . Can I do this ? I ask myself . I don 't know , I answer myself . Will I wake up each morning and feel a dread ? Or will I wake up each morning and look ahead ? Kristen got another part in a movie they are filming here . She is excited as it is a speaking part . She doesn 't know what part she will play , has her audition this afternoon . Guess we 'll know by end of day . She makes me smile , her future so bright . I remember me at her age . I already had a few kids , my only goal at that time was getting one kid potty trained , while waiting to birth another . The future at that time in my life was non - existent . Never thought about it , was too busy . Now , here I am , all these years later , and the future is brushing my face . Here it is , ready or not . Where will I be a year from now ? I think . Today is a new day , dawning cool and clear . Today , I say to myself , I will look ahead to whatever . I can 't change the past , I can only head forward , that 's life . Don 't know where that 'll take me . I do know a few things : That I loved my husband ; that Familial Frontal Lobe Dementia is a horrible , horrible way to go ; that I love my children with all of my soul ; that those grandbabies are so , so precious ; that I love my mother ; that I love my sisters ' & brothers ' ; that I do have a future , one that will not be spent with my husband , but a future none the less . Another really cool morning . Someone , ( Jack ? Kristen ? ) turned on the cooler after I went to sleep , left it on all night . Jeez , it 's freezing in here . I wanted to wake them up and yell , but , decided not to . It would wake up husband , then my long day would be even longer . I BBQ 'd yesterday . Husband sat at the patio door and " instructed " me on how to BBQ . I had to clench my jaw to keep my mouth quiet . I have always been one to just tackle something , no instructions , no directions , just do it . He , on the other hand , needed to " read up " on it , study it , then do it . Anyway , the BBQ was absolutely delicious , with no leftovers . Ha ! ! For two days , husband has not slept most of the day . Don 't know what is up with that . There has been some stabilization , somewhat . Memory has been OK . Walking has been more and more unsteady . Insisted on getting the mail yesterday , went out in just socks to the mailbox . I told him to use the walker or at least put your shoes on , but no , went out the way he wanted to . You know that commercial that shows people who are off balance because of issues , one where it looks lke they are walking sideways ? Picture that along with some spasticity in the legs and you have husband now . Pitiful . I want to get him a better pair of shoes . Maybe that 'll help ? Don 't know . The shoes he has are New Balance , but because of his spastic gait , he wears shoes down in no time . I spend my days thinking of ways to help and aid in his walk . Mainly , THE WAuLKER WILL HELP YOU WALK . It 's going to take a real good fall , then , and maybe then , he will start using the walker . Stubborn . Like I said , he has been more or less OK this week . I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop though . It 's coming , sneaks up on you , then , wham , kinda like pie in your face . Off we go to Never Never Land . Sometimes it 's like cold reality , sometimes it 's funny . Just . Never . Know . One thing 's for sure , it keeps you on your toes . Today will be a good day , I hope . I like these good days , but , it also spoils you just a little bit . Just when you think it 's OK , you are suddenly slapped with a sudden dose of reality that this is real , it 's really happening , he won 't come out of this one kind of feeling and dread , makes you just deflate . Think , it was so nice while it lasted . I just need to be grateful for these fleeting moments . One day , even that will be gone . Tomorrow is my Birthday . Ugh . The kids love my birthday . So does my husband . I think it 's because they love to see me getting old . Tyler came to visit yesterday . He spent most of the time with husband , I could hear them talking softly . The sound was soothing to me . Then , he raided my refrigerator . Kristen 's friend came by yesterday . Haven 't seen her in a few years . She gave me a big hug , said she was sorry for what is happening to our family now . She 's a lovely girl . Tish will be coming this week . Arizona is burning up . They are on Stand - by for evacuation . Scary . At least I will get my hands on baby Alex . I am thankful for today , this morning . I don 't know what it will bring , this nice , cool morning . I never know what today will bring until husband wakes up . Then , I do a mental check to see what was lost during the night . Father 's Day was very quiet at my house . He slept most of the day . He sleeps on an average of 18 - 20 hours a day now . My husband used to get by on about 4 - 5 hours sleep a day . He was such a hard working man . Now , he 's up for 4 - 5 hours and sleeps the rest of the time . My daughter in law , Christine said yesterday , " that 's not normal to sleep that long " . Uh , what ? Then she realized what she had just said , got tears in her eyes and turned away . Of course that 's not normal , but my life as I know it now is not normal . We have a new " normal " . One that deals with statistics , phases , memory loss , personality change , on set of seizures , halucinations and eventual death . I so wish I could have my other life back . One where the girls in the office and I would complain about our husbands . It was all in fun , but it was so , well , normal . One where my husband would say , " you 've worked hard all day , let 's go out to eat " . Or , " let 's go to the Jemez Mountains tomorrow " . On Sunday night he would say , " Back at it tomorrow , what a great weekend " . On Friday night , " yes , the weekend is here " . So many things I miss about my other life . I don 't dwell on it , but , with Father 's Day yesterday , it got me thinking about my other life . So much has changed . It 's all memories now , that other life . I feel like a different person , I think of that other woman , the other me . I think of how she went about life , being wife and mom . She wasn 't carefree , but she had a great sense of humor , looked at things differently , maybe even took advantage that her husband would always be there . Now that womans ' life has been given a different path . I will still stand strong , I will laugh , I will still be wife and mom . Only , in a different way than I had ever imagined . My husband woke up early this morning . He has been excited for this day . Kind of like a child , anticipating being the Birthday Boy . I will make the day special for him . Since the beginning of this year , I have thought , " What will next year this time be like ? " Our Wedding Anniversay , his Birthday and now , Father 's Day . I know I shouldn 't , but I can 't help it . Now , the 4th of July is coming up and I can 't help but think of next year this time . Will he be gone ? Will he still be here , but gone in his mind ? No one knows . Oh , if only I could turn off this kind of thinking . This disease is so fickle . One minute , he 's fine , the next , not so fine . It keeps you on your toes , that 's for sure . Can get fixated on something so small , but , in his mind , it 's a big problem . There are moments that I don 't know if I 'm coming or going . Take for instance , last night and this morning . His remote for his TV would not turn off the TV , only the cable box . I played with it last night , eventually turning off the TV manually . He became obsessed with this " problem " , with him finally falling asleep . This morning , that 's all he can talk about , his remote . Wants me to take it to the cable company , get it fixed , he says . Told him the cable office is closed today , it 's Sunday . He seems quite upset about it . He focuses on the " problem " , and just won 't let it go . It 's a remote for crying out loud , but , in his mind , it 's just too much for him to bear . And , I have to live with that until tomorrow , when I can take it in to be " fixed " . So , here 's to all the women out there , who have healthy husband 's , who will haved a fun filled day , family time . I , on the other hand , will spend my day explaining to him ( many , many times ) that the cable office is closed and I cannot take his remote in to get " fixed " today . He will have his " special " day today . He will eat one of his favorite foods , get the special treatment . He will fall asleep early , probably , and I will be left alone with my thoughts of " Where will he be next year this time ? " Yesterday , I had a good conversation with my husband . Good in a way because he was fairly " with it " . When I say , " with it " , I mean , he was coherent enough to listen to me and stayed that way for some time . Then it was gone . We talked about a lot of things . I told him that he needed to stop fighting this disease . It was nice , sad , teary and heartfelt . We talked about the early days of our marriage , when our Jack was born , everything . Some he remembered , some he did not . He told me that the first thing he thinks when he wakes up each morning is , " I 'm going to die " . So , I told him to try and think , " What can I do today to make a good memory for my family ? " . I know , he won 't remember that , but it felt good to say it . After that , he seemed quiet , fell asleep for a few hours . Woke him up for dinner , and he started telling me how to make his hamburger . We weren 't having hamburgers for dinner . He is stumbling more and more . There have been no more falls like last week , but , he just can 't seem to walk without holding on to something . The walker is against one wall in the living room , and he grabs onto the walker as he walks by . Won 't use the damn thing , but it 's the first thing he grabs onto as he walks by it . Stubborn . Says people will stare at him if he uses it . As if they don 't stare now ? I see people look at him when we 're out . They glance , look away , glance back at him again , and the look they give him is pity , I see it . Then they look at me as if to say , " what 's wrong with him ? " . Took him grocery shopping with me yesterday . I would rather eat nails . But , he loves to go . Kept getting in front of the basket then just stopping . Loves to pick out his favorite foods . Every time I would put something in the basket , he would pick it back up , look at it , then say he liked or didn 't like it . Maddening . Tomorrow is Father 's Day . I will make him a special dinner , Pat & Christine will come over , maybe Tyler & Susie , maybe Marie , Burt & the babies . I will think of my Father who passed away 26 years ago , I will call my Mother . It 's not much of a celebration , but celebrate we will . For him and for us . Now , who in their right mind would sit on their couch , late at night and clap their hands and say , " yay , the truck is broken , we cannot afford to fix it , ( as I 'm taking my right hand with a fist , pointing it upward and whispering ) " YES " . Me , that 's who . YES ! ! ! ! My husband 's mind does not work and he just doesn 't get it about his driving . He " thinks " he 's fine , just a little stiffness in the legs is all , he tells me . Sometimes I just nod my head , it 's better to do that than the only other option I have , like , " ah , no " . Ever have a 4 year old daredevil ? One that says , " watch me , Mommy , I can jump real far " , as you try not to swallow your tongue and before you can say , " No " , off he goes and does the jump . Your next stop is the ER and you hold his good arm while they are casting the bad arm ? Well , that 's my husband now . It 's just , well , pitiful . Can we all say , " AH HA " . Yes . We are now entering a " cooling off " phase of this disease . Leon has stabilized somewhat . There has been no sudden decline , he seems to have stayed the same for the past several days . Oh , don 't get me wrong , he 's not normal , but there has been no changes , yet . Yesterday , well , not good . He is insisting on driving and we had a discussion on that . Always a mistake on my part . Dr said no more driving . He says I always make it worse than what it really is when we go to the Dr . I don 't know what to do . His Drivers ' License expires on the 23rd of this month . Wants to renew it . Uh , no , but , hard when your husband is told that that too , is being taken away . He is in denial about everything . Says he 's fine . Anyone know how hard this is ? My husband does what his father does . If you deny anything is wrong , well , it doesn 't exist . Makes my head spin . His father is the same . He told my husband , " Well , I don 't know what Sue is saying , you drive fine " . Denial , just like he was when my mother in law got this lovely disease . Told the family , she 's fine , then she dies . I remember the day she died , how the family came together and was shocked at her " sudden death " . What ? When I needed my father in law to go with us to the Neurologist last year to give a family history , I called him . He said he didn 't think there was anything wrong with Leon . I told him he needed to face the facts , that he has the same thing wrong with him that his mother had . He agreed to come , and as we were walking through the hospital , I looked at him watching his son walk . And I said , " Think that 's normal , huh ? " The look in his eyes was pitiful as he watched his son walk . But , admit it ? No . They both are in denial and It . Drives . Me . Crazy . I know his father thinks I 'm the one who 's crazy . You can tell by the way he looks at me . I want to shake him . I am just at a loss today . I want to keep my husband as far away as I can from his father , but that will hurt Leon . He loves his father . I can 't take that away from him , too much has been taken already . But what do I do ? It 's one thing to have to watch your husband loose his ability to walk , talk and think . It 's another thing to have the father of your husband convince him otherwise . He motions with his hands and says , " Oh , he 's fine , he 's fine " . So , there you have 10 things about me that make up " Me " . Tomorrow , I may add 10 more . If it 's honesty you 're looking for , you 've come to the right Blog . Our weekend was OK . Had some good moments , some not so good moments . It 's like that now , you know . Jack was going to give Bessie a bath yesterday afternoon . This dog HATES water and , because she is so big , it 's hard to get her in the tub . All it took was her hearing the water run and she came in the kitchen ( where she is not allowed ) and just looked at me like , " Noooooooooo " . I couldn 't help but laugh . I don 't know how he got her in , but he did . Once she 's in , she loves it , it 's gotta feel good . Of course , my husband , in his childlike mind , wanted to help . Jack just looked at me like , " Mom , no " . We can 't tell him not to help , but when he " helps " , well , it 's more work to have him there than if we did it alone . Bottom line , the dog got clean . I talk to my Mother every Sunday morning . She lives in Los Angeles , where I was born and raised . My Mother is old now , and , how can I say this , well , she doesn 't have all of her faculities anymore . Sad . She lives with my Sister now , can 't live alone . My Sister called me last week and said that she thinks my Mother has a form of Dementia . After talking with her yesterday , I think my sister is right . The conversation we had was crazy . She really rattled me . Had to make another espresso after talking with her . Am going to look into some sort of Support Group today , for me . I need something . There are times I feel so isolated and alone . After years of working outside the home and raising kids , being so busy all the time , the roller coaster has stopped and I am left to wonder , what now ? It has been an adjustment , this staying home thing . I just wish it were under different circumstances . All these years , my husband and I had always said that when Jack turns 18 , we may travel , he said he wanted us to get a 1 bedroom house , so no kids could move back home . It was a standing joke . And we would laugh . The future looked so good . We both were looking for early retirement , begin a new chapter in our lives . The world was at our feet . The things we would plan . Oh , how we would sit up late at night , talking about what we would do once the last kid left the nest . Of course , we all know how it really ended . No more planning a future . I have a future , but it will be by myself . I now have to make decisions I never thought possible . Never once did I ever think that instead of making plans for us to do the things we wanted with no kids , I am now being forced to plan a future without him . I am now his Power of Attorney . I get the task of keeping him alive or pulling the plug . I get the task of planning his funeral . Once all is said and done , I will be left without my husband . I heard the word Widow , and it just did not sound right . Can 't you just say that my husband has passed and be done with it ? Don 't call me Widow . Just sounds too final . My mind has been working overtime alot lately . I think it 's because of reading all of the Clinic Notes Dr Q gave me the other day . I read each and every one of those notes . Sat down with an espresso and dug in . Re - living everything . Remembering certain smells , people , feelings that day , what I was wearing , remembering I had to drop my husband off at home and get back to work where everyone would ask , " Well , how did it go ? " How the hell do you think it went , I say to myself now . He 's going to die , that 's what I would think . I think back to last August when I gave my resignation at work . I gave them 30 days notice . Needed time to find the right person to replace me . How some of the clients called me personally once they found out . Some sent cards of Sympathy , some called and cried with me over the phone . When they hired my replacement , a great gal , on her first day she asked , " Why are you leaving this great place ? " I said , " Well , my husband is terminally ill and I have to care for him " . She sucked in her breath and said , " Oh my God , I 'm so sorry , I 'll never complain about my husband again " . No , honey , don 't , you never know what 's around the corner . I watched a silly show the other night . A couple were getting married . When the vow part came up , something startled me . Ever think about your vows ? " In sickness and in health , til Death do you part " . Not one of us ever thinks about it , at least I didn 't . You are looking at your partner with goo goo eyes , thinking , " yeah " , no one ever thinks about the " in sickness and in health , til death do you part " . Until , like me , you are actually living it . My husband took his first real fall Friday night . His legs do not work anymore . His brain has been destroyed in his motor control area . Ever try to stand up when your foot has gone to sleep ? No control , right ? His toes curl in when he tries to walk . Well , the right big toe curled in , and he went face first onto the floor . I heard a funny noise , came into the living room from the kitchen , looked down the hallway , and , there he was , lying face down . My heart stopped for a moment . Ran to him , he was trying to get up , I was trying to help him , thinking the whole time , " Call 911 , call 911 " . Once I got him up , he was dazed . He may have had a small seizure for all I know . All he could say over and over was , " I fell , I fell " . Reminded me of when the kids were little and they would fall and run to me saying , " I felled , I felled " . Awful . I read alot of Blogs . Most are so entertaining , but there are a select few that make me want to comment . I don 't , but often think of commenting on how trivial they sound . Like , " How do other Moms ' do it with 2 kids ? " , or , " I would love to get out of the house and just do some " Me " time " , or , " my husband has been working so much and has not helped me with anything " . First of all , I did it with 7 ( yes , that 's right , 7 ) kids , I never got any " me " time , my husband was one of the hardest working men I ever knew and not once did I complain that he wasn 't there to help me . There are days when I would trade places with any one of them . How I would love to have their life and their issues . When the girl first answered , as I was talking , she cut me off and transferred me to another person named " Kathy " . Kathy was not at her desk , I had to leave a message . Shoulda known better , but I did leave a message . This " Kathy " called me back and I started telling her that I was in need of counseling with their Pastor . Told her the shortened version of what I was going through and as I was telling her , she would CHUCKLE . Another shoulda known better . I told her the name of my Brother 's Pastor in Florida and how he knew the Pastor there at this local church . She then proceeded to argue with me , telling me they had no such person by that name . As we proceeded on with this crazy conversation , she said , " Well , if you come for counseling , all the Pastor can do is give you Bible references , and because you are Female , ( Really ? Really ? ) another female will have to sit in with the Pastor " . " Also " , she said , " Pastor does not counsel anyone , he cannot charge for this , he is not trained in helping you " . Ah , she didn 't really say that , did she ? It 's a good thing I didn 't go in person to make the appointment . My gut was telling me to just hang up on this person . After about 10 minutes of giving her the name over & over of this Pastor , she kept saying that no person by that name was there , she would ask me again what his name was . Like I was going to change the name ? I told her during the conversation that between Neurologists and Psychiatrists , dealing with a terminally ill husband , financial difficulties and worrying about my future , I somehow got lost in it all and needed guidance for myself . And this woman LAUGHED OUT LOUD , OVER THE PHONE . What a silly person . I don 't mean silly as in funny , goofy , I mean silly as in dumb ass . Our visit with Dr Q went very well yesterday . Actually , it was so relaxing to just sit and talk with him . He has taken a special interest in Leon , and has a soft spot for my husband . His eyes show compassion . I 've mentioned before that Dr Q is leaving UNM and going to Southwest Medical Associates . Because we go to UNM for low cost medical treatment , we will no longer be able to see him . When we went to UNM for his initial visit back in January 2010 , he first saw another Dr . That Dr , within the first 10 minutes of examining Leon , knew it was something beyond his expertise , he said it looked like it was a brain malfunction , that he was going to get another Dr specializing in brain disorders to examine Leon . That was when we met Dr Q . So , yesterday , as he was saying that he wanted Leon to get the best care , I mentioned that I had applied for Medicaid , was waiting to hear if we had been approved . His eyes lit up , then he said that if approved , we could follow him to his new practice . I am praying that we get approved so Leon can continue his care with Dr Q . He gave us all his new information and also , all the clinical notes from Leon 's first visit there at the Neurological Clinic . When we got home , I was reading through the notes . It took me back to the very first day , and as I read , I felt the same way as I did back then . The fear I was feeling , knowing in the pit of my stomach that he indeed had Dementia , not knowing if anyone would listen to me , ugh , it was awful . Then , I came across The Day of Diagnosis . In short , it said , " With the changes of personality , increasing disorganization , the spastic paraperesis and the strong family history of dementing illness present in the mid - forties in this family , it is with regret that I had to inform the patient and his wife of this devasting diagnosis . " Also noted was this , " I advised that the best plan was to maximize time with the family , put the family affairs in order . The patient did not want to know how much time he had left , and I assured him that this time was not certain , but that he should maximize his time with his family . " Huh . It all came back to me . That Day of Diagnosis . When reading this , I remember everything about that day . The sounds , the weather , the smell of the hospital , laughing in the hallway and the Code Blue page to the ER . And I re - lived every moment of that day . So , onto our next adventure in the Land of Dementia . We are certainly praying that Medicaid will be approved and I will be approved as his Caregiver . I ask that you do the same , so Dr Q can follow us to the end . My dear sweet brother in Florida has given me the name of a Pastor here in Albuquerque that his Pastor knows . He has referred me to him , I will call today to set up an appointment with him . I have put me on the back burner too long . I need help too . I have been reading books my wonderful Sister sent me , and believe me , they help . I just need to find my core energy again , and I believe that with the two , I can do it . This morning we go see Dr Quintana for the last time . He is leaving UNM , so Leon will be referred over to the Dementia Clinic with another Dr . We saw this Dr last year . He was great also . Leon does not want to go today . These appointments don 't last long . We talk about everything . Dr always asks , " So , how 's the memory ? " Leon always says , " It 's good ! ! ! ! " Then , the Dr looks over at me and I just shake my head . It 's hard taking him because he is still in so much denial . On the way home he is always quiet , gets home and will sleep for hours . It exhausts him . Another thing we touch on is his " End of Life Plan " . He does not like that . Imagine taking your child in for shots . The child is petrified of needles . And you have to tell them they are getting shots . The child is horrified . Well , that 's what it 's like taking my husband to the Neurologist . Leon 's Drivers License is expiring this month and he is obsessed with re - newing it . I have a hard time telling him that the Dr said no more driving . I don 't know how I can get away with this one . Any suggestions ? Ha , easier said than done . Jack had his first session with the Psychiatrist . He liked her alot , said that he felt better now that he can talk with someone who listens and gets to the heart of it . I am so glad we found her . She has a way with children and can communicate with him . He said , " It 's different with her , Mom . " I 'll take help anyway I can get it . Sometimes , during the day , I feel my world spiraling out of control . I feel as if I am losing ground . I need to stay grounded . For Leon , for Jack and for myself . Jack asked if we could move to Denver sooner than next June . Unfortunately , we cannot . There is no money to do that with . I have to plan , save and decide . We are going to Denver to spend the 4th of July with Justin & Anne . I will take time to visit areas where we can afford to live . For that , I am looing forward to . My life as it is right now , well , there 's not much to look forward to . At least the changes in our life and the decisions I am making for Jack and I get my mind off of this disease that presents itself and slaps me in the face when I wake up each morning . I 'm not talking about Leon 's side effects . We all know what is happening to him . I 'm talking about what this monster is doing to Jack and myself . I took Jack to the Dr on Monday . The things he told the Dr , how he has been feeling , his thoughts , his emotional state , broke my heart . I wanted to grab my child and run as far away as I could get us , away from the awful truth . My child is suffering beyond any scope I 'd imagined . The Dr immediately recognized his condition and said that they had a Psychiatrist on staff and would I mind if he went and got her to speak with us . After some time , he came back with her . I felt instantly calm around her . She seems to be a wonderful , understanding lady . There was compassion in her eyes . She said Jack is in need of immediate treatment , said to make an appointment for this week , said if they say there is no room for him this week , make it happen . So , luckily , there was an opening for today at 2 : 45 . I know I am making the right decision in him going to see her . Jack has seemed more relaxed , kind of like he 's saying , " finally " . I see good things happening with this counseling . I see my Jack coming back . Jack told me things that his father has done I didn 't know about . He said , " Mom , he is so bad " . He also told both Dr 's how bad off his dad is and how hurt he is by all of this . He also said that when he was little , he always had me , but now that he is older , he needs his dad and his dad cannot be there for him . He said he has a sore heart . My God , my child is hurting beyond measure . And all because of a disease called Familial Frontal Lobe Dementia . I am hoping today 's session will open up the door he needs . This is going to be a journey for him . A journey toward healing and looking to the future with hope . As for me , I will be OK . In some ways , I am anxious for Leon 's journey to be over . Not because I want him dead . I want it to be over for him and his suffering . Is that wrong of me ? Don 't judge me people , he has a TERMINAL disease , there is no cure , there is nothing that can be done for him . If there was a chance , I would move Heaven and Earth for him . I cannot . We are left with what we have . I see the suffering every day . The hallucinations , the disorientation , the lack of memory , his inability to walk . And I say to myself , " How much longer is this going to go on ? " Only God knows in His Infinite Wisdom . As I sit here typing this I feel the anger , frustration and horror of this terrible disease and what it 's done to my family . The Side Effects of Dementia . We are now moving into a phase I do not like ( as if I liked any of this ) . Leon has continued to go downhill . It is so evident now . It has been 7 weeks , and he has not come out of it . There are moments , and , when I say moments , I mean moments , where he is " OK " , but it only lasts for mere minutes , then , he goes back into his world . His memory is pitiful now . I hold my breath every morning , to see what he has lost overnight . He has been combative over the last few days , only towards me . I have had to learn to just take it and continue on with my day . The other day he took 3 showers , forgetting he had already had his shower . Of course , I made it funny and he seemed to think it was funny too . I had an anxiety attack on Friday . Haven 't had one in years . It just hit me . I was still feeling it 's effects yesterday . Can 't go there , too much to do , too many people are relying on me . Need to find my inner strength again . This phase has taken me off guard . Didn 't see it coming , maybe that 's why I had an anxiety attack . Had my car serviced on Friday . It cost me $ 88 . 00 for diagnostic and oil change . Now , I have to come up with $ 400 . 00 by the end of this month for the Tune - up , fix a small oil leak and transmission flush . Uh , ok , the odds of me coming up with that kind of money by the end of this month ( have to have it done in order to go to Denver ) are very slim . Guess I need to buy a lottery ticket . Story of my life : just when I think I 'm gonna catch a break , reality slams me in the face . My daughter in law and I were talking yesterday . She said , " You know , Sue , you can call me anytime you are having a bad day . " To make a point , I said , " Christine , every day is a bad day for me . " On to the next chapter . My appointment with Medicaid went pretty well . This mysterious guy sent a replacement , a young lady , to meet with me . Funny how things turn out . She shared with me that her Father lost one leg to a work related accident 2 1 / 2 years ago and she helped him with his filing for Disability , Medicaid and Medicare . She told me that I should file for Family Medicaid , as our chances of the whole family getting approved were better than just one member of the family . She also informed me that I could apply for " Extra Help " from Medicare . She said we qualified for that as well . She explained that if Medicaid didn 't cover Leon 's medical expenses , Medicare would pick up the slack and we would have no out of pocket medical expenses . Now , we play the waiting game . I am glad she was the one doing the initial application . She understands the wole process after having gone through this with her parents . She also stated that if approved , I could apply as a " Caregiver " to Leon , and , that they would pay me to care for him . That 's a wild card , as I have learned that the state has no money to pay for a Caregiver , but , I will apply and see what happens . On the home front , had a bad day with Leon yesterday . He seemed very restless , but , did sleep for the better of the afternoon . After we had an early dinner , he seemed somewhat calmer . He was still restless , like he was wanting to argue , but I kept my distance and eventually he went to sleep . Today , I take the car in for an oil change and see if the car needs a tune - up . If that 's the case , there is no money for a tune - up . But , I will once again trust that the expense will not be greater for what I have set aside . My car runs fabulous , smooth riding , but because this car has to last me for the rest of my life , I have to keep up with maintenance . Please pray with me that the maintenance will not be a great expense , and I will be able to handle it . We are going to Denver for the 4th of July weekend . My son , Justin and his wife are there now , as well as 2 neices . It will be a chance to look around and see what would be available when we move there . My one neice , Trisha , is so excited and said she could advise me as to where I could get the best for my buck . Am looking forward to that . Justin has offered to help pay for my gas to go there , will take him up on the offer . So , that is where I am at today . Don 't know what tomorrow will bring , just know that whatever it is , I will have to get through it . One foot in front of the other . Today is a new day . I got up and decided today is a start to my new future life . I will have 11 months to make a move . 11 months to plan and save . This move will not come cheap . I don 't know how I 'll do it , but , I 'm not going to focus on how , I 'm going to focus on the when . I get excited when I think about it . Excited about a new beginning . Excited for Jack , he 'll have more of an opportunity to further his schooling . We now talk about it every day . There is a spark in his eyes , one that I haven 't seen in a long time . I feel good about this . I feel settled about this . It just may be OK after all . Of course leaving here means I will be leaving without Leon , that is , if he passes before we leave . Jack and I have decided that even if he is still here , we are going . We will just take him with us . He may not know what 's going on , but he 'll have us . If he is not , then his final resting place will be here . I can 't think that we are leaving him behind , his spirit will be with us , always . I went to Medicaid yesterday . Was given the correct form I 've needed , but was never provided . The lady was very nice , said to fill out and return , then I would get an appointment anywhere from 10 - 15 days . Because I have this appointment tomorrow , with the mysterious guy who never showed up last week , she said go to the appointment , with the proper form . Here 's to hoping that all goes well tomorrow and he 'll be approved for Medicaid . Please join me as I care for my husband who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness called Early Onset Familial Alzheimer 's Disease . A very rare form of Alzheimer 's , inherited on his Mothers ' side of the family . All other family members died by age 47 . My husband is 46 . Join me won 't you , as I travel this road that will leave me a Widow . Laugh with me , cry with me . |
I just really love this YouTube thing . I have not seen this video in years and years . Now some nice person has decided to share their copy with the world . I know they weren 't really supposed to , but it 's not like this is on TV all the time . If you 're not familiar , it 's the Travelling Wilburys . . . George Harrison , Roy Orbison , Jeff Lynne , Bob Dylan , and Tom Petty . By the way , I saw something that said it is Jeff Lynne 's birthday today . Todd really likes ELO , I kind of make fun of it because some of the stuff is slightly weird . But you have to admit , the guy has made some pretty amazing music . I think this is the best , but that 's just me . It is kind of sad to see this because George Harrison and Roy Orbison are gone now . I hear they are soon going to be re - releasing the albums that they made . It 's about time ! Elmer is a character that Peanut and I created last night . He is a pretty funny guy , and he 's wanting to break into the music business . Here is his first video . What do you think ? His girlfriend is working up a video of her own . We 'll share it soon ! No pics today . Bubby got shots today and he was just not his happy self . I have been fortunate to not have to cook much lately , thanks to my mom , neighbors , friends , and people from church . It has been SO great . But that is slowing down , and I have almost used up my freezer meals also . Last night my goal was to fix a meal out of just what was on hand . . . because I really haven 't done much menu planning and my shopping has been kind of disorganized . ( Todd asks me what I need from the store , I scramble around trying to think of what we need in about 15 minutes , then he goes out and buys it . ) This is a pretty fun thing to do . You can come up with some great recipes just by using what is on hand . Last night I made chili and potato salad . Here is what I used for the chili : 1 lb . hamburger meat1 med . onion , diced1 clove garlicA little veg . oil to brown those things . 16 oz . can of diced tomatoes1 / 3 c . ketchup ( because that was not enough tomatoes and I didn 't have another can ) 1 can ranch style beansChili powder and salt to taste ( I don 't know how much I used ! ) The potato salad was easy . I didn 't use a recipe here , either . I just tried to think what might be in a good potato salad . 1 can sliced new potatoes ( then I chopped them a little smaller ) 1 / 2 c . chopped celery1 / 2 c . Miracle WhipChopped roasted red pepper , out of a jar that we use for sandwiches1 tbsp . pickle relishThe potato salad was really good . It would have been nice with a chopped boiled egg , I think , but I didn 't have time for all that . The reason I had a can of potatoes was because I had seen a recipe for potato salad in Quick Cooking that used them , and I had meant to make it back in the summer . I have a bunch of odds and ends in my pantry , so it might be interesting to try to use all that up in the next couple of weeks . Here is a second poem I found in my searching . Peanut and I got a kick out of it . It was also written in the 1800s . So cute ! It must have been popular to write poetry in ' baby talk . ' Maybe so people could recite it , and it would be entertaining ? ONLY A BABYAuthor UnknownONLY a baby ' Thout any hair , ' Cept just a littleFuzz here and there . Only a baby , Name you have none , Barefooted and dimpled , Sweet little one . Only a baby , Teeth none at all ; What are you good for , Only to squall ? Only a baby , Just a week old ; What are you here for , You little scold ? BABY ' S REPLY . Only a baby ! What sood I be ? Lots o ' big folksBeen little like me . Ain 't dot any hair ? ' Es I have , so ; S ' pos ' n ' I hadn 't , Dess it tood drow . Not any teeth - - Wouldn 't have one ; Don 't dit my dinnerGnawin ' a bone . What am I here for ? ' At 's petty mean ; Who 's dot a better right ' T ever you 've seen ? What am I dood for , Did you say ? Eber so many singsEbery day . Tourse I squall at times , Sometimes I bawl ; Zey dassn 't spant me , Taus I 'm so small . Only a baby ! ' Es , sir , ' at 's true ; ' N ' if you only tood , You 'd be one , too . ' At 's all I 've to say , You 're mos ' too old ; Dess I 'll det into bed , Toes dettin ' cold . I found a cute poem last night . I think this is a poem that my Aunt Lee used to recite . It is very close , anyway . It was written in the 1800s . We are not experiencing this kind of sibling rivalry at our house ! I hadn 't thought of this poem in a long time , but yesterday I told Bubby I couldn 't give him any " tandy . " It all came back , so I had to go look it up ! THE NEW BABYI ' se a poor little sorrowful baby , For Bidget is way down tairs , The titten has statched my finder , And dolly won 't say her payers . Ain 't seen my bootiful mammaSince ever so long adoe , And I ain 't her tunningest babyNo longer , for Bidget says so . My mamma 's dot a new baby ; Dod dived it , he did , yesterday ; And it kies , and it kies , so defful , I wish he would tate it away . Don 't want no sweet little sister , I want my dood mamma , I do , I want her to tis me , and tis me , And tall me her pessus Lulu . Oh , here tums nurse wis the baby ! It sees me yite out of its eyes ; I dess we will keep it , and dive itSome tandy whenever it kies ; I dess I will dive it my dollyTo play wis ' most every day ; And I dess , I dess - - say , Bidget , Ask Dod not to tate it away . Posted by Not that we haven 't talked a lot about Chrismas around here , but I thought I would get a feel for where Junior is in his understanding . InterviewMama : Why do we have Christmas ? Junior : Because it 's fun and you get lots and lots of presents and it 's about God and you get lots of presents . It 's special . Mama : What do you mean it 's about God ? ( trying to help him out here . . . ) Junior : What you do is you make a Christmas list and you give it to Santa and then he brings you what the Christmas list says . Mama : Help me out here , son . What is Christmas all about ? Junior : It 's about sharing . God gave us baby Jesus . That was the first Christmas . Jesus is the Son of God . Third time is the charm . This was very revealing , because we really try to emphasize that Christmas is Jesus ' birthday . Just goes to show what part of the message is coming across ! When we were at Grandma 's for Thanksgiving , I enjoyed reading their newspaper . Every Thanksgiving , they ask the local kindergarten classes for the instructions on how to cook a turkey . They publish the responses , and they can be really funny . So in that spirit , I asked Junior if he could tell me how to make Christmas cookies . He has an advantage here because he usually helps me make cookies : Recipe for Christmas CookiesStart with dough . You go with eggs . Then you go with chocolate chips . Use a cookie spoon . Now squeeze the cookie spoon and cookies will come out . Put the cookies on a cookie pan and put them in the oven at 30 degrees for 3 minutes . Since we are not doing a scheduled " school day " right now , Peanut and Junior are going to be helping with this blog so that they can practice what they learned earlier this year . A few weeks ago , Peanut had to give a report to her co - op class on an Oklahoma product or something invented in Oklahoma . She chose the shopping cart , which was invented in the 1930s in Oklahoma by Sylvan Goldman . It is an interesting story . Here is her report : Sylvan Goldman was the owner of a chain of grocery stores in Oklahoma City , called Humpty Dumpty - Standard . In those days , when people shopped at the grocery store , they carried a basket in their hand to hold everything they wanted to buy . In 1936 , Mr . Goldman got the idea to make a folding cart that would hold two baskets , so that it would be easier to buy more groceries . A maintenance man named Fred Young helped him design the cart . It took them a while to get itright , but in a few months , they had shopping carts in all the stores . At first , no one would use the carts . Men thought their arms were strong enough to carry around a little shopping basket . Women thought the cart looked too much like a baby buggy . A few days later , Mr . Goldman got the idea to hire men and women models to pretend to shop at the front of the store where people could see them when they came in . The lady at the front of the store would say , " Everybody is using these , why not you ? " So their idea worked and now everyone uses shopping carts at the grocery store . Mr . Goldman kept improving the cart , and he made them bigger so that people would buy even more . The shopping cart is the invention that has helped grocery stores the most . A few weeks ago , I got an email that said you could go to Dr . Phil 's website and sign up to be on one of his shows about homeschooling . I thought about it , but then decided not to . I wouldn 't get picked anyway , I 'm not extreme enough . ( And I figured that the show would be taped really soon , and it 's not like we can go anywhere for a while ! ) I had heard that he has a low opinion of homeschooling , especially the homeschooling of teens . I never watch his show , but I have heard some of his quotes , which show he either has a great deal of ignorance , or is misinformed on the whole subject . Here is an article about one family who was invited to be in the studio audience of this show . I don 't know when it will air , maybe it already has . Dr . Phil Article * Update * I got an email this afternoon from a different source that says this program is scheduled for October 27th . I don 't know if I 'll try to watch it or not . Stuff like that usually just makes me irritated . If he 'd give his source for the " research " that shows that teenagers need the socialization of a public school environment , that would be worth a look . I looked out in the backyard yesterday and noticed that my bell peppers were still growing . They looked pretty small , but I thought I 'd better go check them out . I couldn 't believe how big some of them were ! Some of them are really nice and big , and the undersides are flat , so I can even stuff them . I have never been able to stuff peppers out of my garden ! They always taste fine , but they have pointy ends . They are also rather small , so I would have to stuff a whole bunch to make a meal . I think this kind of pepper needs some cool weather ! There are also some green tomatoes , I don 't know if they have time to ripen before we have a frost , so I might bring them in anyway . But it is supposed to be above freezing at least one more week . Peanut got us tickled the other day . She plays with the boy next door who is six years old . His dad sometimes will go out there and play football with them . Peanut is right in there playing with them . ( She was always scared to play soccer with our former neighbors , but she likes good old American football . ) One night I asked her if they played touch football or tackle football . She told me that they played both kinds . I guess I looked kind of surprised ( or dismayed ) , because she put in really quick , " But I don 't tackle hard . . . I just kind of grab their shoulder and let them down easy . " Oh well good , Peanut . That wasn 't what I was worried about , but I am glad you are not so rough on them ! Posted by Even though my camera is not cooperating , I finally got a couple of pics of the little gerbils . I am " babysitting " them today since Peanut has gone to her Grandma 's . She was looking forward to the trip , but not looking forward to being separated from the little animals . So I promised I would play with them , which I did . They slept most of the afternoon , but when I went in to see them about 5PM , they were running around the cage , so I scooped them out and let them play in a deep plastic storage box . That way they had more room to run around . I made it a point to hold both of them for a while . They still are not used to being held . They were nice and did not try to bite me . I think they are starting to like it . They are very mouse - like to me , so playing with them is actually an act of motherly - love ( for my daughter , not for the gerbils ! ) But I have not gotten so much as a tear in my eye . Maybe it is good therapy for me . This one is Princie . She is the biggest one , and the most friendly . She spends most of her time on her hind legs , looking around . She is very curious . Here is Pastell . She is a little younger . She is still pretty small . She is more of a shy girl , and a hider . I couldn 't get a picture of her for the longest time because she doesn 't like being out in the open . She runs from hiding place to hiding place . They ran around in the box for about an hour . They seemed to like it , and I put them back in the cage when they started slowing down and acting tired . They have an exercise wheel , but they don 't use it . One of the first things they did was to move their bedding into the wheel , and that is where they sleep . I guess it is cozy for them . Now that everything is cleaned up , Mr . B and I are going to get some Chinese food ! Yum ! And probably rent a movie from the store . Sorry I have been so slow posting . I have had camera troubles lately . I though maybe my rechargeable batteries had gone bad , they are over a year old . So I bought some new ones . Turns out , the batteries were probably fine , it is the camera . It is sucking them dry , sitting overnight turned off . We had a fun day Saturday , though . Here is Peanut 's cake . The guys got the trim all painted on the house . Thanks Dad ! That has been such a load off Todd 's mind . And the house looks really good . Peanut got a lot of great stuff . She is now the proud owner of a pair of gerbils . I have a picture of one . I am trying to take a picture of the other one . It is hard to get good pictures of them , because they are pretty fast . Yay for Walmart ! They now have Brach 's Mellocreme Pumpkins in a bag ! Soooo good ! We had a good weekend . We went out for hamburgers Friday night , and on Saturday we got some things done around the house . I got some sewing done , and Todd painted . Saturday night our friends let the kids come over while Todd and I went out to eat and did a little shopping . We had a nice time , and I think the kids did too . I think our friends ' little boy liked having them over , because they mentioned a couple of times that they would like to have them come over again some evening . Peanut said he kept laughing until he would lose his breath . After the baby went to bed , they watched The Incredibles . They hadn 't seen that in a long time . Today was a lazy day . We all ended up taking short naps . The only problem is that now it is 10 : 35pm and the kids cannot sleep . Ugh . You can 't win . They didn 't sleep that long ! Saturday night we were supposed to have a babysitter , but that fell through . We decided to go ahead and go out to eat with the kids , then rent a movie and put them to bed . We ended up eating at Los Vaqueros here in town . I had never been there before , but Todd had . His friend Danny loves the place . It was pretty good . It was kind of " old school " Mexican food . Some people would call it more " authentic " Mexican food . That is why Danny likes it . His mother - in - law is from Mexico , and that is how she cooks . It reminded me of what we had eaten on our honeymoon in San Antonio . It was a little more " mooshy " and bland . It was definitely not Alfredo 's ! I would give it a 7 out of 10 , though . I don 't know if we will go there much . It is close to us , but we don 't eat out that often . There are places near us that we like better . We rented Failure to Launch . It was just okay . I think they tried to add weird stuff to it so it wouldn 't be so much of a " chick flick . " Hmmm . But Terry Bradshaw was so funny ! I wonder when he will get his own sit - com ? I have been waiting for that for 3 or 4 years . I have probably complained about this before , but somehow nothing really tastes the same since I 've been pregnant . I will think of something that sounds good , buy or prepare that item , and it just does not taste right . But I 'm happy to report that there is one thing that tastes every bit as good as I remember it : Brach 's Pumpkin Candies ! Oh , they are so wonderful . The only thing is , I had to buy them in a bag with the chocolate candy corns . . . yuck . Even the kids don 't really like those . I hope I do not get cavities from these things . I am still looking for a place that has just the pumpkins in a bag . The website says they still sell them like that . I am not going to get the off - brand that WalMart sells , because they do not look right . Even though the off - brand yellow candy corns are okay . School is going pretty well . Peanut is wanting to make her own illustrated manuscript . I can 't find any instructions on how to do that , we are just going from a picture in a book . I will look at the library on Friday to see if I can find anything about it . She has to do a little speech next week on a famous Oklahoman for her co - op class . She picked Shannon Miller . We found a lot of info about her , we are trying to narrow it down . I just thought , I should have asked her if she wanted to do Roger Miller . Hee hee ! She is a fan of the Disney version of Robin Hood , so I think she would know who he was . ( And we used to have You Can 't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd on one of her tapes . ) Praise the Lord ! Todd is home from his trip . Yay ! ( And now I can blog again ! ) He is glad to be back too . He is catching up on his rest , so that 's good . The kids were very glad to see him . He slept in quite a while today , and they were getting pretty antsy . There were many attempts made to wake him up . I felt like the Secret Service , having to guard the bedroom door so carefully . But they were just excited to have him home . Here is the latest funny thing from our house . Junior has this big Spiderman action figure that Sus and Dan gave him ( not to be confused with Spaderman , which is a totally different toy ! ) Then he has two little small Spiderman action figures . He pretends that the big Spiderman is the Daddy , and the two little ones are his little kids . They climb on him and hang on him just like real kids . One day Peanut got ahold of them . Of course , she decided to give the family a mom also , so she went to her Barbie box . Ballerina Barbie got selected to play the part of the mama . She brought them all to Junior and showed him what she had done . He thought that was very interesting ( I 'm sure it had never crossed his mind to make a family out of them . ) He told her , " Umm . . . Peanut . . . . get a cooler wife . " Hee hee . Ballerina Barbie is kind of prim and proper . She has a perfect little bun in her hair , and of course she wears a flower costume . One of the solutions Ms . Winn offered in The Plug - in Drug was to remove the television set from the child 's bedroom . This surprised me at first . What on earth is a TV doing in a child 's bedroom ? ! ! She quotes a survey that says that 53 % of children ages 2 to 18 have a television set in their rooms . I 'm sure most parents do that because they don 't want to watch the same thing as their children are watching . Still , that is a lot of kids who are watching TV unsupervised . Scary . I have seen a lot of recommendations online for a one - week TV Turnoff . After doing the 30 - day Challenge , I would have to recommend that instead . After one week , we were really not seeing many benefits , and the kids were probably at the worst point . If we had not made the committment for a month , I would not have been all that impressed . It would have driven home the point that we watch too much TV , that 's for sure . I don 't think we would have learned much more than that , and we would not have developed any kind of routine where we didn 't automatically think of TV first thing in the morning , or the minute we walked in the door . Junior is really having difficulty with one show a day . I am not sure how this will work . Because we had errands this morning , I was able to hold him off of watching a show in the morning . When it was time for Peanut 's school , I let him watch a short DVD , but tonight after dinner he was just dying to watch another tape . He doesn 't get it . I let him help me refill my inkjet cartridge . He liked it , but I 'm sure I have a few more gray hairs now . That is probably not a good thing for a 5 - year - old to help with . From now on we will stick with cooking and taking out the garbage . While we were doing our TV Challenge , I found a book at the library called The Plug - In Drug by Marie Winn . It was originally written in 1977 . I read the updated version from 2002 . It is quite an interesting read . Some of it is a bit frightening , though . She talks about how parents use the television as sort of a sedative , to get a break from child care . They become dependent upon using it , and soon it begins to disrupt their lives . They know there is something wrong with this , but most are not willing to get out from under it . In this way , she compares television to a drug . The book is filled with study upon study that prove the negative effects of television on young children as well as school - age children . I liked that the author doesn 't stop there . She seems to understand why parents use television as a babysitter or a bribe , and offers solutions such as a TV - Turnoff , strict rules about television , time limits , and keeping TVs out of the childrens ' rooms . This book should be read by all parents . When you finish , you may not want to throw the TV out the window , but I think you will have a more realistic , honest view of what television does to your family . As for us , we have cut down our television use to about an hour a day . We are still playing around with the schedule , however . I am thinking that longer programs might be okay some weekends . Peanut has yet to request a show , though I told her she could watch one a day . Junior has had more of a problem with the limitation . He watches his program first thing in the morning , then he is out of time for the day . I have allowed a little computer time , though , while Peanut is doing school . Well , the challenge is over . The kids were allowed to watch TV this weekend at Grandma 's house . Of course they didn 't watch much because there was other stuff to do . Junior and Grandpa did keep up their tradition of camping out on the livingroom floor watching Ghosts of the Abyss . That is a documentary about the diving machines going down to see The Titanic on the bottom of the ocean . I don 't think they ever make it through the whole thing , they always fall asleep . Here are a few of the benefits I 've seen from skipping TV for the past 30 days : 1 . The kids play together more often . This was not automatic , and not without it 's problems , but they are better at getting along with each other . 2 . Less complaining about being bored . Here is another that was just a gradual change . I would not have been able to say this if we had only had 1 or 2 weeks off of TV . They are able to find something to do when they need to , usually without begging me to come up with something for them . 3 . They are less grouchy in the mornings . Junior is actually really cheerful when he gets up . He does not stick his thumb in his mouth and begin ordering me around . Peanut is less cheerful than he is , but she does pretty well if she gets some attention right at first , in the form of a hug and some cuddle time . 4 . Junior no longer sucks his thumb first thing in the morning . A couple of good things that have happened , I 'm not sure if they are directly related to the TV Challenge : 1 . The kids play outside more . The weather has cooled down a lot over the past month , though , and I think it is more because of that . Most of the outside time starts about 5 pm , and there aren 't any kids shows by that time . Still , there were some things that they would watch with us after 5 , like " Unwrapped " and some of the shows on Discovery and TLC . 2 . Peanut has been helping me more with household chores . This may be more related to the fact that she complained of being bored more , and so was given work to do . She found out that there were a few things she actually liked doing . Posted by This should actually be the end of our TV Challenge , but we will just keep going until the weekend since things have been going so well . I told the kids that since we 'll be going to Grandma and Grandpa 's for the weekend , we will just end the challenge there . They will be welcome to watch TV there . This Grandma and Grandpa do not have cable , and the reception they have is not all that great . There are a few Saturday cartoons that might get turned on , but the kids are not used to watching TV there anyway . There is too much other stuff going on , too many kittens , too many toys , etc . Today was SO nice , we were going to visit the nature park , but Mom didn 't know that it is closed on Monday AND Tuesday . That was a big disappointment ! I thought it was just closed on Mondays . So we had a little picnic at the Yukon park and fed cat food to the turtles and ducks . I think it was 70 degrees during the time of day that we were there . What a nice relief . I have had a ton more energy today because of that . I think maybe the heat was just taking it out of me . Peanut had her piano lesson , which Junior interrupted more than once , wanting to play down at the end of the piano . ( Very quietly , but I could tell it was bothering her . ) I had to tell him to go play elsewhere , and he was so dejected . So now he is taking piano also . I couldn 't stand it , poor little guy . ( I guess I should explain that I am Peanut 's teacher again this year . I wanted her taking from a nice lady at church , but when we added dance plus piano , it was just too much $ $ . She really wants to take another year of dance , and that is not one of the things I can teach . So I am trying again to teach her piano , which is going much better now that she is older . ) Junior was very proud of himself . He has to sit on a phone book , and put his feet on a stool plus a phone book . I guess he is still a lot shorter than Peanut was when she started . We went through about 10 pages of the book today , I hope he doesn 't expect that every time . Peanut is having two lessons a week for 30 minutesPosted by Everything is going well around here . I took a look today at my ironing pile growing and growing . I am bad about waiting until there is some show on TV I want to watch , then doing my ironing during that time . I 'm going to have to just do it anyway . Maybe I can parcel it out into small jobs . I can set the board where I can sit down iron , I just haven 't done that very often . Junior now gets up every morning and asks me , " Are you going to get fatter and fatter every day until the baby comes ? " Some things kids say are really not that cute . We are supposed to get an ultrasound tomorrow . That should be kind of fun . I have never had one this late . The kids are counting down the days until the TV Challenge is over . I told Peanut that things are not going to be exactly the same , we are going to have some strict limits . She was disappointed , I think she was expecting a TV marathon or something . But she still admitted that she had gotten to do some fun things . Today we went to the dinosaur museum . Junior did " D is for Dinosaur " week last week , so this was supposed to go along with it . The kids really had fun . The whole place was nearly empty . Of course , it is one of the first days of school , so I 'm sure no one is really doing field trips this early . And they just took down their big T . Rex exibit . We got to watch them packing it into crates to be shipped somewhere else . That was kind of interesting . There were lots of volunteers around , and I was proud of Peanut . She talked to them nicely and asked lots of questions . It is good to take advantage of volunteers on days like today - to a certain extent . I am looking for our book , What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs ? It is written for kids . Here is a good article by the same name . It is difficult to explain things from a creationist perspective ( Biblical worldview ) when you are right in the middle of a museum where they are telling you everything happened 100 - 200 million years ago . Here is Junior looking at a display about fossils . He thought the dinosaurs were pretty cool , but he was mostly into the hands - on exhibits , especially the mechanical ones - surprise , suprise ! Before he went to bed , he explained to his dad how some of the dinosaurs could chew their food , and others could just cut through it with their teeth like scissors . They had a little hinge thing that showed that , so of course that made plenty of sense to him . They also had a displaPosted by Peanut and the little boy next door made a teepee yesterday . I will try to get a picture on here tomorrow . It rained last night and tore down the teepee , but she reports they got it back together . He had a book that showed how to make one , so they came in all excited and asked me for several things to make it . They harvested their own " bamboo poles " from down by the pond . They are pretty resourceful . I am glad that this little guy gets into stuff like that , because Peanut sure does . It was too small for them once they got it built , but he has a three - year - old brother that fits it nicely . Sadly , tonight Junior went for a bike ride and had a bad crash . He was skinned up and his feelings were hurt even more . This time he skinned his lip and nose . . . very lightly , but they were swelled up when he went to bed tonight . He looked a little roughed up , but I think he will be better by tomorrow . His sissy was SO sweet to him . She got out a little frog washcloth puppet and let it talk to him . Then she got him a chair and a little question / answer book that he likes . She let the puppet " read " to him , and he liked that . I made her a coupon that said she could have french toast tomorrow . . . so she is very excited about that ! What a sweetie ! We had a small miracle this morning . Todd and I were really wanting to sleep in , but a little before 8AM I heard little footsteps coming into our room . I knew that it was Junior , and I was expecting him to come in and ask for breakfast or something . Instead , he turned around and walked out . I didn 't hear from him for a while , then I started hearing him very quietly playing in the living room . It was amazing ! I rested some more , and got up at 8 : 30 to take a shower . When I was all done , I found him sitting on our bed talking very quietly to Todd . He was all dressed . I think he was wanting breakfast . He and I went into the kitchen and he helped me make donuts out of canned biscuits . I 'm not sure he had ever had those before . They were quite a hit . Saturday cartoons have always been our sneaky little way of catching a little extra sleep on Saturday morning . I assumed that without those , I would be on entertainment duty , but at least today I didn 't have to do that . Maybe that is a " TV Challenge " benefit , or maybe just a gift from God . Anyway , it was very nice ! ! The kids and I went garage saling this morning and that way Todd got to sleep in a bit . We didn 't find one thing . . . even the kids . So it was a disappointing morning for that . Maybe we will get to go next week and things will be better . School started here on Friday , so maybe people were too busy this week to get a sale ready . There were very few sales , and most of them were junky . Peanut scared me the other day . We had the radio on , and she asked me , " Why do they keep talking about the Ramsey murder case ? " I think I broke out in a cold sweat . I was thinking , " What does she know ? Oh , Lord , help me to say the right thing . " If you know Peanut , that is a subject you would never want to discuss with her . So I very casually said , " Well , they mean that a person was killed , and their last name was Ramsey . " She looked even more worried . Something clicked together in my head , and I said quickly , " It wasn 't Dave Ramsey . " He is one of the guys we listen to on the radio . She waPosted by There was a bit of a cheat tonight . I had to go to the local homeschool meeting , and Todd said the kids could just go with him to his cousin 's house because he was helping him fix his back porch . Well , there was nothing for them to do ( I had forgotten that they have dogs in the backyard , and so the kids can 't play back there . ) So his cousin 's wife had to keep them in the house , and pulled out Toy Story for them to watch . Oh well , if she was going to have to watch them , she might as well let them watch a tape . It couldn 't be helped and it was only for a short time . If I had thought the whole thing through , they could have just come with me . There were several kids there anyway . I have found a few websites about the effects of TV on kids that are interesting . I am finding that there is also some weird stuff out there if you are into the " no TV " thing . Much of it is " rich corporations are all out to get us " hype . Here is one that had some interesting info : LimiTV , Inc . And this one is also interesting to me because it is from the " Benji " website . Yes , the dog in the movies . Here are two of our projects from school . Junior 's assignment was to make a dinosaur out of clay . Peanut jumped right on it , and came up with this critter . Very cute : However , Junior would not make a dinosaur . I tried to show him the easy steps to make a dinosaur , but instead he made a playdough dinosaur dig site and proceeded to dig for a dinosaur . See , this is what I mean if you hear me say that I don 't think I would put Jr . in Kindergarten this year if he were in public school . He would be in such trouble all the time . He is too far " out of the box . " So I didn 't get a picture of the dinosaur digging mess . Instead , here is a picture he did of an apple tree when we were on " A is for Apple . " Things are going smoothly . The kids are a little doubtful about that , but they hardly say anything anymore . I don 't know if that is because they don 't really miss it anymore , or if they have just given up . I would like to believe the former . That may be true for Peanut , though , because I 'm not sure she would give up the whining if she really cared . Junior 's kindergarten this week is " D is for Dinosaur " so he is learning about dinosaurs . He looked at some pictures of different dinosaurs today . His favorite was the Apatosaurus . I think because it was the biggest of all the pictures . Then he drew his own . I don 't think they are a certain kind of dinosaur , they may be a mixture of all the dinosaurs we looked at . I mentioned this last week , but if you are a person who believes in prayer , then please pray for little Anna Jane . I will let you read the latest update . My heart just goes out to her mama and daddy . I don 't know how a parent would go through something like this , but I know the Lord is just carrying them through . I got a new ( to me ) book at the library called The Plug - in Drug by Marie Winn . I will tell more about it later after I 've read it through . I had heard of it years ago , but never got interested in the subject of TV enough to look at it . It gave me a " duh " moment today . The first chapter of the book had a comment from one mother she had interviewed . The comment had something to do with thumb - sucking . Apparently , when the TV went on in the morning , the blanket and the thumb came out for this particular little boy . Oh dear ! I 'm thinking , there are only two times a day when Junior sucks his thumb : when he goes to sleep , and when he first wakes up . The thing is , TV was the first thing he asked for when he woke up , then he would sit there holding his blanket with his thumb in his mouth . Usually just about 15 minutes , but that was the routine . Guess what ? Now with no TV , the first thing that comes out are the Hot Wheels cars . You can 't suck your thumb when you are busy racing cars ! I had never noticed that until I read about that today . I have also noticed that at night when it is time for the " softie , " I can always find it on the top bed . He has to toss it up there when he makes his bed , and there it stays . No more dragging it around the house ! I may be onto something , huh ? No TV = less thumb - sucking ? I don 't know why that never came to me before . The past two days have gone pretty well . We had a park day yesterday , and library day was today since we did not get to go Friday . I had another cool thing happen , kind of accidently . Peanut really does love school . She is just at that age , I guess . She always asks me when we are going to do school , and she 's excited if we 're starting a new book , etc . The only thing she doPosted by This challenge is actually going by quickly . Two weeks already ! I 'm not missing it much at all . The times I miss it most are when I have handwork to do , or ironing . That is when I like to keep it on for company . . . and that is even when the kids are around being loud . I have started listening to the radio a little more . I found a website called Shoutcast which lets you find Internet radio stations playing different kinds of music . There is one station I have found which is just great . It is called KCEA and they play all sorts of big band music . It is a fun station to listen to if you like stuff like Sinatra and Benny Goodman . Here are several other shows I listen to , usually during the daytime : Dave Ramsey You can only listen to him so long before you know exactly what he is going to say . Chuck SwindollCharles StanleyFocus on the FamilyNancy Leigh Demoss She is the one who talked about the TV Challenge on her show . Dr . David JeremiahDr . Michael YoussefHank Hanegraaff Very interesting guy . People call in with Bible questions , and he is able to answer very clearly and Biblically . Sean HannityDr . Laura She is like Dave Ramsey . After a few days , you can predict her answers to everyone . K - LOVE Contemporary Christian Music . That is a lot of stuff . I don 't listen to all that every day , of course . Just here and there . I think all of these let you listen to their shows for free online . Well , I don 't think you can listen to Dr . Laura online for free . I very rarely listen to any of them online . Nancy Leigh Demoss 's radio shows are transcribed on her website , which is very nice . I wish that Focus on the Family would do that . . . I am always catching the last 10 minutes of that show , then wish I could have heard the whole thing . On the baby front , we had a good appointment last week . In about 10 days we will have another ultrasound , so that will be interesting . They want to see the placenta again , but I don 't think there is anything to worry about . My feet are swelling , I guess it was about time for that . I 'm just going to take it easy forPosted by We had a great trip to Austin . It was a bit tiring . We enjoyed sleeping in today , somehow it worked out for everyone to sleep until at least 10 : 30 . That is a very rare treat for me . Sus and Dan were great hosts . They took us to eat at Threadgill 's and showed us a little bit of Austin . The highlight of the trip for the kids was a trip to Cabela 's outdoor store . It is a bit like Bass Pro Shops . We all thought it was a pretty neat store to visit . They had several " museum - type " displays through the store , plus a shooting gallery , and a little aquarium . We got to swim in the pool at the apartments , which is is what the kids were looking forward to doing . It was nice . Junior got to try jumping off the side of the pool and he really liked it . Our city pool is usually too crowded , and I guess the thought of so many kids being around makes him too nervous to even try . He kept telling me to move farther back , and if you know how wary he is around the water , that 's quite an accomplishment for him . It was a quick trip , but we had a great time . We didn 't get to visit the Dallas Museum of Art on the way home , mostly because Mom and Dad slept in on Friday , and by the time we left town , there was not enough time to go and really enjoy the museum , so we had to postpone that one . Maybe in another month or so we can plan a trip there . Great news on our challenge , though ! There was no DVD watching on the entire trip . I brought the DVD player along , even though that would have been a little cheat . But why have the crazy thing if you can 't even use it on a 6 - 7 hour trip ? It wasn 't needed at all on the way down because the kids were sleeping . On the way back they slept quite a bit also , then they played silly in the back of the van . ( We made them go to the back because they were so noisy ! ) The last two hours were the worst of the trip , but by that time we had almost made it , plus we would have had to stop again to set the whole thing up . Instead , we played the Guessing Game , the Alphabet Game , and the Quiet Game . Today the neighbor kids cPosted by We had a good day today . Everyone played so nicely . . . even me ! We got some exciting news , so we get a little mini - vacation , thanks to Todd 's work . They are sending us to see my Sussy ! So that is cool . It will be a long trip , but a good trip . Tonight it was very tempting to turn the TV back on , I admit . The kids got all packed and were so excited I thought they were going to drive me crazy . It was no where near time to leave , and they had their stuff carrying it around the house , like they had to be ready to go at a moment 's notice . I made them put it at the door , and they did good . They only picked it up 2 or 3 times after that . Todd had to leave for a while , and I wanted to take a bath , but they were so hyper I felt like I had to stay right with them . I went in the living room and they had wrecked it . So I told them we just couldn 't go unless the living room was clean . You should have seen them . It did my heart good . Junior was running full speed to put everything where I told him to . Peanut had a spring in her step , too . And they got it done in about 5 minutes ! ! I have never seen them like that . Sometimes you just have to harness that energy , I guess . I am still getting some flak from the kids , but it is sparse . Peanut asked me when was it going to be fun . I had to remind her of all the fun things we have done in the past week or so . ( Not all of it was because of the TV Challenge , but it did give us more time to do fun stuff . ) So she agreed , although I think she is still expecting me to do great and marvelous things to entertain her . Today we met some people from our homeschool group at the pool . It was really hot , but fun . Peanut loves the pool , and it is even better when she sees one of her friends there . So she had a ball . Junior saw one boy he knew , and I think they spent more time out of the pool . This boy apparently knows some things about Spiderman . Junior is always looking out for boys that know some things about Spiderman , as he has never seen a Spiderman show . So he depends on secondhand information about what Spiderman can and cannot do , who are his enemies , etc . Poor kid . He cannot watch the Spiderman movies , of course , but I am on the lookout for some of the old cartoons that we used to watch when we were kids . I was thinking I was going to have another ultrasound on Thursday , but I 'm not . That will be in two weeks . The thing on Thursday is instead , a shot . That is kind of a downer . I am Rh negative , so I have to get these shots everytime . My zoology professor in college told me that means I do not have " monkey blood " , so I guess that is a good thing . Which reminds me , I thought I saw that professor last night at Walmart . But I wasn 't sure because she looked rather older . I got home and thought , well it has been nearly 18 years since I took that class , I 'm sure she does look that much older . So that makes me feel older too . I saw this quote today : " Women should not have children after 35 ; thirty - five children are enough ! " hee hee Junior is doing much better at this . He got up this morning and did not say a word about watching a show . He just asked for his breakfast and after that he got dressed without being asked ! He did ask me today how I decided that we were not going to watch TV . He thinks we ought to end it today , but I told him I thought it would be good if we stuck with our original 30 days . After all , there are only 22 days left . Last week I mentioned the TV Free Challenge to a couple of other moms in our homeschooling group . One of them asked me how I ever was able to get my husband on board with it . I didn 't really try . I told him what I was thinking of doing , and I told him that he didn 't have to , it was more for me and the kids . He isn 't that much of a TV guy , though . When he watches during the week , he will watch the History Channel , or sometimes one of those shows where they are fixing up cars or motorcycles . On the weekends , he watches This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop . He has been known to check out the old movie channels also . He said he would do it with us . I don 't really know if it makes him much difference . It has probably been good for him , just for the fact that this week and next is the PBS pledge drive , and it keeps him from turning on the TV for his PBS shows and seeing that they are off the schedule . I know we seem grumpy about that , and we really are . It is twice a year that you will hear both of us griping and moaning about the same thing . If you have a chance , please visit this site and say a prayer for Anna Jane . She is the 4yo daughter of a lady that I used to go to Bible Study with . She just had her second liver transplant because of cancer . You can find out more about the story on that site , but just pray for her and also that her mom and dad would be encouraged in the Lord ! This was a special day for Peanut , she was baptized this morning at church . Her daddy got to baptize her , so that made it even more special . Grandma Millie , Grandpa Charles and Grandma Mary all were able to come . Afterward we went for hamburgers and she got a banana split . Today was not much of a challenge day for the kids , as we do not watch that much TV on Sundays . In the evenings , we will turn on Extreme Home Makeovers because Peanut likes those , but that is more in the winter . The kids played outside once it stopped being so hot today . This was the first night I actually turned on the TV without even thinking . I turned it right back off , and felt a little embarrassed . I 'm glad no one saw me . It was sheer habit , I had just kissed the kids night and tucked them in , so I went into my routine . My shows aren 't even on tonight anyway , it is PBS Pledge - a - thon and they take them off for that . To be honest , I wouldn 't mind seeing my shows tonight , because I feel kind of " bleh . " Peanut started in on me tonight because I was busy looking for a lost book . She is not sure I love her since I never spend time with her , and did not stop until bedtime . It is just one of those manipulation games she plays , ( Todd assures me that 's right ) but still . . . it is hard to hear over and over . It just wears on me . While I wasn 't spending time with her today - ( ha ha ) , we had a lot of fun playing on the computer anyway . Peanut took a quiz : You Are Fozzie Bear " Wocka ! Wocka ! " You 're the life of the party , and you love making people crack up . If only your routine didn 't always bomb ! You may find more groans than laughs , but always keep the jokes coming . The Muppet Personality TestThen we did a quiz for Junior . We just tried to pick the answers that were appropriate for him . This turned out so funny , we laughed and laughed : You Are AnimalA complete lunatic , you 're operating on 100 % animal instincts . You thrive on uncontrolled energy , and you 're downright scary . But you sure can beat a good drum . " Kill ! Kill ! " The Muppet Personality TestThen I did this one : Posted by The more busy you are , the easier this is . No one thought of TV this morning , because our friends were still here . Once they drove away , both kids asked if we could please watch cartoons . By then it was 11 : 00 , and there is nothing much to watch at that time anyway . Peanut and I spent more time cleaning her room . She and the girls had made a nice attempt to clean up . I noticed , however , that the dress - up box would not close . I decided to work on it a bit because it is not supposed to have that much stuff in it . I found wet towels , bathing suits , some dirty sheets ( that have been missing for a month ! ) and Peanut 's little throw blankets that are not used for dress - up . Quite interesting . I 'm glad I found the wet stuff today and not in two weeks when the smell got worse and worse ! Overall , it was a good day . Junior practiced some more on his bike riding , and I noticed he is getting more cautious . He got in trouble last week for not paying attention - - so somehow Dad made an impression on him ! Now that Peanut 's room is getting cleaned up , I had a good idea . We are going to take pictures of the top of the desk , shelf , bed , and dresser , for examples of how things are supposed to look . Then she can use that to go by to tell if she 's done her job . I will try to post pictures of what we do . Friday - This was an easy challenge day also . Things went so smoothly in the morning that it almost makes me think that Junior 's whining on Thursday morning was for Grandma 's benefit . I don 't know . She was an excellent participant , though and did not really give any sympathy . So if that was his purpose , it didn 't work . We had a fun trip to the library . Junior is used to getting a videotape or DVD each time he goes , and of course he wanted one this time . Even though I told him he couldn 't watch it , he thought it would be nice to just go ahead and check one out , even though he wouldn 't watch it . Habits are funny things . But he actually took the time to look for books that he wanted . Usually he plays computers at the library , but this time all the computers were being used . So we went to a card catalog computer and he told me he wanted to look at all the books about cars . So we found the number for cars - it is 629 . 2 ( I will have to remember that one ! ) And there were three books right there about cars . One was even about race cars . So those are what he has now . He was excited to check those out and take them home . Usually when I tell him to go get a book , he takes about 5 seconds . He knows where to find Dr . Seuss books , so he goes and gets the most colorful one and he 's done . I will ask him if there is anything else he wants and make a few suggestions , but no , he just wants the one Dr . Seuss . ( And his tape of course . ) So this was a big thing for him . We ate lunch , then came home and got ready for our friends from Kansas City to come see us . Everyone had a ball . They played outside , had dinner in the playhouse , and splashed around in the kiddie pool until almost dark . We had a nice visit . It was so much fun having them . The girls put on a play for us before bedtime , which of course was extremely silly . The boys fell asleep pretty easily , but the girls did not go to sleep until long past 12 midnight . I could still hear them whispering when I fell asleep . Yesterday was an easy " Challenge " day . We got up early to leave for Tulsa to meet Mom . Poor thing , she was up there with nothing to do but eat out and shop all day while Dad was in classes at his convention . Luckily , we came to save the day . We got there a bit after 10 AM and drove to the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks . It was a neat experience . We had taken Peanut about 3 years ago , but Junior was too little to come , so this was his first time . We liked all the exhibits . The shark tanks were a little bit of a disappointment . We had been there the first year it was open , and there were a lot of sharks and it was amazing . This time they had very few sharks , which takes some of the drama out of the whole thing . After the aquarium , we ate a late lunch , then went swimming at the hotel . We ate pizza with Grandpa to end the day . We did not get back until past bedtime , so of course there was no time for TV that day . Today was a bit different . Junior woke up and requested his usual breakfast routine of a TV show . That wasn 't going to happen , so instead of whining for five minutes or so , he chose to whine for an hour . It did not get him anywhere , but finally I ended up getting out his marble set and putting it together . He had not played with that for a while , and he did marble races several times during the day . Watch it , though . He is quite a cheater on marble races . He tends to pick out " his " marble when it is halfway through the race and it is pretty sure which one will win . If he doesn 't do that , he will start his marble ahead so that it has a better chance . He needs a bit of training on the race stuff . He does well with card games . When he first learned to play cards , we made a big deal of the end - of - game routine which consists of congratulating the other player whether you win or not . But this does not carry over to marble races , I suppose . He also was able to show off his two - wheeler - riding skills to his Grandma and Grandpa . Peanut worked on cleaning her room today . At the beginning , Grandma was here to help , so that was Posted by Today did not go too badly . We had already planned a morning at the park with some people from our homeschool group , so that helped . Junior woke up this morning asking for his " show " and when he did not get it , he was disappointed . But some of his Hot Wheels were still out from last night , so he started playing with those instead . No more complaints the rest of the day from him . I spoke too soon when I said Peanut would not have as much of a problem with it . She really only expects to watch two half - hour shows in the afternoon , and a lot of times she misses half of the first one because she doesn 't get her school stuff done . But she was really bored today . I think she expected me to entertain her 100 % of that time , but I was behind on my work because we had been to the park . So I told her she would have to find something to do . She put on her pouty face and started to whine about everything she could think of . I tried the reasoning approach , which went completely over her head , so that was a waste of time . So I started her on chores . She had to sweep the floor - with the electric broom . Which should be an easy job . Are you aware that when you make a child do work , it means that you don 't love them ? Well , I was made aware of this . Also , she had to wind the cord back up on the sweeper , which is clearly child abuse . I expect DHS to be by anytime . Since the sweeping did not cheer her up , she had to wash all the dishes that I couldn 't fit into the dishwasher . And what is more , she had to wash them until they were clean , which meant Mama would put them back into the dishwater instead of drying them and putting them away . Of course , this also means that I don 't love her , and when I correct her like that it hurts her feelings . But when that was over , suddenly life was a bit more pleasant . We got one of her dresser drawers out to sort out and put back in order . She said that she did not mind this job , since it was a fun job . I had Junior do one of his , and he didn 't do half bad for his age . He liked folding T - shirts into squaPosted by We are going to take the TV - free challenge that Nancy Leigh Demoss has been talking about on the radio . We 're starting tomorrow , it should be pretty interesting . It will be hardest for Junior , so you might be praying for him . He doesn 't watch that much , but he is probably the most addicted to " his " time on the TV . Peanut likes a few shows , but if there is a fun alternative somewhere , she 'll take it . I will miss my Brit - com on Sunday nights , but the next two weeks are " Festival " , so it will get pre - empted anyway . . . for Doo - wop Senior Citizens or Old Lawrence Welk Stars . It should be an interesting month . I will let you know how we are doing . For about a year now , Junior has insisted on having the tags cut out of all his shirts . Most of the tags are out now , but once in a while he will come up to me and say , " Mom , why does this shirt still have a tag ? " Like I am falling down on the job or something . This weekend we went to Grandma 's house . She showed me something interesting : most of her shirts and Cindy 's shirts have the tags cut out of them . So there you go . That explains quite a lot . Junior just walked in and informed me of something else . Easy Off BAM is much better than Lime - A - Way . This is because it cleans your kitchen much better , and also if you put a dirty penny in Easy Off BAM for just a second , it will come out all clean and shiny . I need to go turn off the TV ! Junior 's school lessons this week center around the letter S , and the topic is " The Sun . " Today he was supposed to draw a picture of the sun . He didn 't exactly follow directions , but if you see the picture in the encyclopedia that the kids have , it really is similar . Junior 's artworkPicture like the one in the encyclopedia Here are a couple of the kids ' latest drawings . I got Peanut a new drawing book from a garage sale last weekend , she loves books like that . This was her most colorful out of a few she drew Saturday . Here is one that Junior brought to me today . I am glad that he is actually drawing , and this is a big improvement over his last one . That may not be saying much , the last time he really drew anything was probably 3 or 4 months ago . He is more of a writer , I think . He only wants to practice making letters . He looks kind of wild , huh ? He was just in that kind of mood today . He started real " school " this week , since Peanut is busy with camp . He is doing very well . I am very proud of him , he really likes it . I read to him and he pretends to not be listening , but he can repeat everything back to me . He is making a " Creation Book " this week , and we 'll try to put some of it on here when he is done . It is more of a " crafty " project that I thought he would not do , but he is doing very well . It involves coloring and cutting out with scissors , two activities that he would rather not do , but he acts like he is having fun . Who knew ? Peanut is going to VBS this week . Our church has been doing a sports camp with Uncharted Waters for the past five years . It is a pretty neat thing . Covenant ( our church ) is the kind of their summer training camp . It is a group of mostly college athletes who spend their summer traveling to different churches putting on sports - oriented programs that are similar to VBS . They work with kids on their sports skills and also incorporate character building , Bible teaching , and evangelism into the program . Peanut is really enjoying it . She picked cheerleading as her sport this year . She likes all the coaches that work with them . All of them that I have seen , seem to be really good with kids . One little girl at church on Sunday pointed to one of the coaches and told me that she met her that morning , and said , " I can 't believe I already made a friend and camp hasn 't even started yet ! " When they first started doing this I was a little disappointed , but it is not really that different than a normal VBS nowadays . They end up spending 3 hours there , instead of 2 hours , and that extra hour is mostly sports . They still have music and Bible stories , a Scripture to memorize , and even some homework . I can see why they are doing it . VBS around this area is getting to be just a fun thing for kids that already go to church . The idea of a sports camp really appeals to a lot of kids that would normally not come to a regular VBS . And they do bring them in . I think there are three churches in this area ( counting ours ) that are having sports camp this week . I will try to get a few pictures this week . Junior is just hanging out with me , he will be old enough to go next year . He got to meet a couple of friends at the park today while Sissy was busy with camp . I 'm not sure what we 'll do tomorrow . Yesterday was our big ultrasound . We have a little face picture , but it is not the best quality , so I won 't put it here . It looks a little like a spook , and I 'm not having a ghost - baby . We went to a specialist , he was very nice , and he assured us that this is a very healthy baby , right on target for everything , and weighing 8 oz . which is the perfect weight for 18 weeks . Praise God ! He is so good to us ! I 'm glad that it is not already too big , but don 't worry , it 'll get there . So you might be wondering if we were able to find out if we are going to have a girl baby or a boy baby . Alright , I 'll tell you . . . . IT ' SABOY ! Woohoo ! A new brother ! ! ! ! And Peanut is very happy . She decided at the last minute that she didn 't really care , after hoping for a girl for so long . I told her that makes her the one and only Princess , so that 's a good thing . We had a party for Junior on Saturday . He had a great time . Here is a picture of his cake . He had a " Cash Cab " cake in honor of his favorite showAfterwards , Dad and the two grandpas worked on the backyard playhouse . It looks great . Todd just got his Ham Radio License ! Woo hoo ! He studied hard , took the test , and made a 100 % on it . That was a couple of weeks ago , and they just gave him his license last week . His station is KE5IRG . Way to go , Todd ! ! We have baby birds in our backyard birdhouse again this year . This time has been better , as they are sparrows and no other birds have decided to mess with them . There was some worry on Saturday as the mama and daddy did not show up for a long time , and we wondered if something had happened to them . The babies were still alive when we got home from church Sunday , so I thought that was a good sign . I sat at the kitchen table for a long time Sunday , and in about an hour and a half , the mama came back for like 5 seconds , but I guess that is long enough to feed baby birds . You know , I try not to pass judgement on other parents who are hopefully doing their best , but still . . . But on Monday , the mama and daddy both were very busy coming by to feed them just every few minutes , and yesterday was much the same . The babies are much louder now . You can hear them all over the yard , they are very cute . Peanut has figured out how to hush them , I didn 't know you could do that . She just makes a long " shush " sound and they hush right up . There are at least three and maybe even four , it 's hard to tell . I tried to get a picture , but it is impossible , the little camera can 't get it . The picture is from All Posters Junior has found a new favorite show , Cash Cab . He really gets into it . The " three strikes and you 're out " rule is very interesting to him . He acts really worried when someone gets a strike , " Oh , no ! If they get three strikes I 'm gonna cry ! " But I think he really is living for that moment . And not that many people get kicked out , but it 's just enough to hold his interest . So today we had to play it in the car . I 'm the driver , but we turn the tables so that I 'm actually the contestant and he is the host . Let me tell you , his game is much more challenging than the one on TV . Today it went like this : Junior : Ok , Who built China ? Mama : Ummm . . . ah . . . The ancient Chinese ? Junior : No , that is incorrect ! The correct answer is : China Guy ! Mama : Okay , wow , that was a hard one . Junior : You have One Strike ! Mama : Alright , one strike . Junior : Next question : Who invented numbers ? Mama : Umm . . . . Arabic . . . Guy ? Junior : That is correct ! You got it RIGHT ! ! ! Mama : Oh , good . But he is very fair . He wouldn 't let Peanut count an answer wrong because I got it right , just not the thing she was thinking of . Even though she insisted that I needed to be able to tell what she was thinking , that was the rule . See what I mean ? It is a hard , hard , game . I had a very nice Mothers ' Day . The kids both gave me cute cards and Todd fixed lunch for me . I didn 't have to lift a finger ! ! He even cleaned up . Wow ! Oh , and Peanut made me a craft , which is very nice . It is a pretty sand art bottle . I 'll try to take a picture tomorrow . The kids even went to bed early ! That doesn 't happen too often . I got to listen to Riverwalk Jazz , I finished up our homeschool yearbook pages , and now I 'm just waiting for my BritComs to come on TV . Here is a very nice article I read this week , called The Pursuit of Happiness . It is a bit long , but really good . And I just love the picture she has of the seashell candles . We went to Hobby Lobby this week and they were selling bowls of seashells . I was so tempted to get some and try to make those candles , then I thought better of it . I don 't know how to make candles , and I have enough projects backed up because of my lack of energy the past couple of months . I wasn 't even hoping for such luck , but it so happened that today the doctor could not find a heartbeat with her fancy Doppler thing . I think it is just too early , but I guess they also don 't want to take any chances since I will not be back for 4 weeks . So they sent me down the hall to get an ultrasound ! Here is the best picture they gave me . It is still not as clear as it looked on the screen . They found a heartbeat just fine with the ultrasound , and the baby was wiggling and squirming a lot . Very cute . I should say , the child 's nose did not really look as long as it does in the picture ! Both kids got to see it . Peanut was quite overjoyed . I am not sure how much Junior understood about it . He did not have too much to say , but he did like the ultrasound equipment . It looked like an elaborate video game . That is all for tonight , because I 'm tired . I am uploading some pictures of the kids and I will try to put them on here tomorrow . Today is such a sad day for me and all the other fans of " The Andy Griffith Show . " On the front page of my Sunday paper are the words , " Barney Dies . " That is so far from the truth , though . Barney will never die . Don Knotts was the talent that brought him to life , but Barney will live forever . He was truly the best television character ever . It is really sad to watch the TV stars of today even try to live up to the standard set by people like Don Knotts ( not to mention the beloved Lucille Ball . ) The writers do not have the heart and soul for it , and the actors don 't have the understanding . They are reduced to stupid insults and sex jokes that only cause the kind of uncomfortable laughter brought on by embarrassment . I am just grateful that my family and I can still share a little bit of what was Mayberry . A huge part of that was the talent of Don Knotts . Mayberry . com I finally got the COOL thing I ordered a while back . It is a DVD set of " The Electric Company " episodes . I really don 't know why this is so entertaining to me , but it is hilarious . Now it seems very low - tech and corny , but I 'm sure they were as well - done as they could be back then . It was still PBS and all . You can see clips of it here You have to click " Audio and Video Clips . " I guess you would had to have watched it back then to appreciate it . My kids are young enough that they find it very interesting . They really like the " Silent E " song . It starts out : " Who can turn a " can " into a " cane ? " I think Peanut just likes it for the music , but Junior is fascinated by the fact that there is a letter that doesn 't make a sound . Scott , you need to get one of these ! Todd doesn 't remember this show . At all . I don 't know what the deal is ! I think he watched plenty of TV as a kid , I guess not daytime TV . He was probably listening to the radio . Whenever we hear a song from way back in the early seventies , he 'll say , " Remember when this song came out ? " No , hon , I don 't remember when " An Old Fashioned Love Song " came out . How can you remember ' 71 or ' 72 ? He probably was listening , though . Today I got I burst of energy ( or maybe it was insanity ! ) Or both . First , I just meant to go through our medicines because I knew some of them were probably expired . That went well , so I decided to go through my spices . I have heard that you can keep spices for a very long time , but I think they do lose some of their flavor . Anyway , I got on the Internet and tried to find out how long you are really supposed to keep them . McCormick 's website says 3 to 4 years for whole spices and 2 to 3 years for ground spices . Then the question is , " How do you know how old they are ? " They don 't have a date on the bottle . But McCormick has a decoder on their webpage that you can type the code from the bottom of the bottle and it will tell you the date it was packaged . Pretty cool . I noticed that the newer bottles actually have an expiration date on them . The weird thing is that they have a little blurb on there where they say if a bottle says " Baltimore , MD " on it , it is over 15 years old . Well , I had one of those bottles . But here 's the thing : I remember buying it , and it was not 15 years ago ! It could have been 8 years , maybe . But think of how long it must have sat on the store shelf ! The little decoder gave me the date of 1981 , but I know that can 't be true , because the label says " Copyright 1985 . " But still ! Yesterday I got an email from the Home School Legal Defense Association . This is a great organization - they do a lot to protect our rights to homeschool , this is the first thing they have sent along that I am not too sure about . Here is what they have to say : ( This is for the state of Oklahoma . ) Calls are needed immediately to stop Senate Bill 1690 which would prohibit 16 and 17 - year - olds from obtaining a driver 's license unless they first pass a state - approved math test . The bill is scheduled for a hearing today at 2 : 30 p . m . in the Senate Public Safety Committee . A student would be required to pass either the state - wide 8th - grade math test , or another test approved by the State Department of Education . Homeschooled students would be at a tremendous disadvantage since they don 't use the state 's math curriculum and would have no control over the alternative test the Department of Education might approve . I can see part of their point . This looks like just another hoop to jump through to get a drivers license , and I wonder what 8th - grade math really has to do with being able to drive . But I can 't see calling and identifying myself as a homeschool parent and then saying I was opposed to this . What does that say ? That I 'm afraid my kid will not be able to pass the math test and might not get a driver 's license ? At 16 or 17 , they had better be able to do 8th - grade math ! I am not sure that homeschooled students would be at a tremendous disadvantage . Of course , I 'm one of the people that doesn 't think it is a terrible idea to raise the driving age to 18 , so what do I know ? Monday at co - op , Peanut went to public speaking class . This is the first time she has gone . The theme was " Space , " and she chose The Sun for her topic . I had her tell me some questions that she might have about the sun . Then we went online and looked up the answers . Now mind you , I read all this stuff to her and kind of pulled out the important parts . She asked some really good questions and this is what she came up with : My talk is about the sun . I had some questions about the sun , so we wrote them down , and then tried to find the answers . When was the sun created ? The fourth day of creation . God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night . He also made the stars . God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth , to govern the day and the night , and to separate light from darkness . And God saw that it was good . And there was evening , and there was morning - the fourth day . Genesis 1 : 16 - 19 . The sun is a star . We are just closer to it , so it looks bigger . How do scientists study the sun if you 're not even supposed to look at it . Scientists use a satellite called SOHO that orbits around the sun . It has telescopes and other things that help scientists study the sun . What is the sun made of ? Mostly hydrogen and helium . Why do things orbit around the sun ? The sun is so big that it is always pulling the planets around it . The reason they do not fall into the sun is because they are going so fast . They would go straight out into space , but the sun pulls them so they go around in a circle instead of straight . How hot is the sun ? 10 , 000 degrees . There are stars that are hotter than that , and stars that are not as hot . Yay Peanut ! ! She did a great job . She spoke up nice and clear , which was no surprise from her . She had some visual aids as well , two balls out of Junior 's toy box , but they did not turn out to be that helpful . It hasn 't happened yet , but Peanut is about to ask me what day it is . I will tell her that it 's Tuesday , and then this song will go through my head : Today is Tuesday , you know what that means . . . We 're gonna have an extra special guest . So get out the broom , sweep the place clean , And dust off the mat so the welcome can be seen . Roll out the carpet , strike up the band , And give out with a " Hip Hooray ! ( Hip Hooray ) Wiggle your ears , like good Mouseketeers . We 're gonna present a guest today . ' Cause Tueday is guest star day ! The sad thing is , sometimes I will actually sing this song . That will throw the kids off like nothing else . " What does that mean , Mama ? " We had friends over for a little while yesterday . Yesterday was a dreary day , lots of clouds , it was cold , plus we were getting ready for Dad 's trip . Still , something happy for me in the midst of all that . Two words : Seed Catalogs ! I just love those crazy things . I don 't really order that much from them , but they really brighten up the days . I think I like the pictures of strawberries the best . |
I was about fifteen when my mother Beile passed away . After a short time , we left our hometown Potashnia and moved to Druya . Despite being the youngest of three children , taking care of the home became my duty . I also had other responsibilities ; I was an assistant to my father Shlomo Izhak Papkin in his workshop / factory for cleaning flax , of forty workers . In the year 1934 , I married Yekutiel Aharon Levitanus , a native of Druya . We sustained ourselves through a grocery store that we owned . When the Soviets entered Druya in 1939 , my husband had to quit the store and become a clerk in a cooperative ( private ownership was not allowed ) . Together with him worked a Polish man by the name of Mr . Petrovsky . During the Polish times ( 1920 - 1939 ) , he worked for the tax department . The minute the Soviets arrived , Mr . Petrovsky became very afraid . My husband tried very hard to help him and to make sure that nothing bad would happen to him . He said many good things about him to the new rulers . This Polish man was very kind and repaid his debt to us by allowing my husband to work in the mill as soon as the Germans took over in the June of 1941 . This job was very important for my husband because the location of the job was outside of the ghetto that had been established for the Jews . Working outside the ghetto enabled my husband to purchase food for our family of three children . My husband also helped other families who were not able to leave the ghetto . Shortly after the Germans entered Druya , they divided the Jewish population into two groups : people whom they identified as useful and those deemed to be useless . N t only did they divide them , but they also put them in different streets . O r family lived on the street of the public bath that had been added to the area where Jews were allowed to live . O ly people from the first group lived in these streets . M ny Jewish families tried to find places to live in this area , since it was perceived as less dangerous . W took in our relatives , the families Papkin , Halperin and Friedman . I our four rooms , there were twenty - three souls . M father , who during normal times was very involved with the synagogue , established a prayer time in our house . T ree times a day , Jews would come to our apartment and pray . P aying was not the only purpose of these gatherings ; men would come to discuss the news and to plan how to escape from the nails of the eradicators on the day that ghetto liquidation came . S me people wanted to build hideouts in the attics while others preferred hiding in the basements . I thought that the best solution would be to take my children to one of the farmers . T e other Jews made clear to my husband that since his work was essential for the German mill , he would not be able to escape with us . T ey argued that my husband 's escape would alert the Germans to a Jewish escape . S nce we had no choice , the people who left with me were my three children , the son of my brother and our neighbor Zalman Quinn . W left for the village Staiky , about five kilometers from Druya . A Christian by the name of Maslyakov helped us . W hid in his barn and after being there for two weeks , my oldest daughter who was seven started complaining . How can we be in a hideout while my father and grandfather stay in town , always in danger ? she asked . Des ite knowing that this expression only meant that she missed her father , I was greatly influenced and I decided to return to town . I m de myself feel better by stupidly assuring myThe first day of my return to the ghetto , I took my aunt , Feige Shugel , to a Christian doctor , named Valansky , who ( clearly ) lived outside the ghetto . Val nsky was a very good man and loyal friend . He efused to take any payment for the visit , explaining that we would need the money for the coming troubles , but his main concern was not our money . Thi Polish doctor knew the future fate of the Jews and he told us in secret that the Germans planned to liquidate the ghetto during the next forty - eight hours . Tru y , most of the Jews had known that without a miracle from heaven , the ghetto of Druya would eventually be liquidated like the other ghettos nearby . How ver , many had still clung to the hope that there was something to be done and that a miracle would come somehow . But to hear such a clear warning from the Polish doctor shook us to our cores . Wit heavy hearts , we returned to the ghetto and told people the sobering news . It as already too late to do anything substantial about the imminent liquidation . The only thing we could do was to watch , to be on our guard day and night , to be ready to escape when the murderers started the liquidation . On Tuesday , at three in the morning , my husband while on guard duty realized that the Germans were going from home to home , ordering Jews to gather at the market square for census . Im ediately , we were ready to escape , but we had no plan or any idea really for where to go . Th Germans had people guarding all of the main streets and bridges . Th chance to save ourselves was limited . Du ing the short time that we had , my husband thought that if we split up and each headed for separate directions , there was better chance that at list one of us would survive . My husband Yekutiel Aharon took in his arms our little baby Dovidke , who was only a year - and - a - half old . I ook the two older kids , Chaia Miryam who was seven , and Meirke who was four . We didn 't even have a chance to say goodbye . We just started running . As we left the house , we saw our neighbors , Moshe and Libe Sarah Shapira . Th y stood there in shock , not knowing what to do . Th y were leaning on each other and their faces showed their utter desolation . Wi h frozen eyes , they stared at the tragic pandemonium that swept the streets . I elled for them to run behind us before the Germans came . Wi h tears in their eyes , they answered that there was nowhere to run and that they would rather meet their deaths in their homes . Th y would prefer not to die in an empty street . We continued running and encountered their son , Avraham Shapira . Wh le moving , I yelled to him , Where should we run ? His atter - of - fact answer froze my blood : There is no chance to survive . Nothi g is left for us but to march towards our graves . I didn t have time to analyze our condition , but for a split second , a cruel thought came to my head . Here i a young man who has no solution but to accept his own death . So wha chance to survive does a woman with two young children have ? In suc condition , the rational mind doesn 't control you . The ov rwhelming desire to live was like a lunacy , an urgency to hold on . I cont nued running , clutching the hands of my young children , who were draChaos roared around us , muddling my senses and driving me forward in a state of hysteria . I cont nued holding my son Meirke 's hand and ran through the alley that would take us to the river Druyika . I sudd nly noticed a German chasing us with a rifle . He tri d to shoot at us and in a split second , I decided to jump to the side into the yard of a Christian farmer named Kuzma . For an instant , the German killer could not see us . Until his day , I still do not understand how I thought of this idea . I deci ed not to enter the home of the Christian man that I knew . Instea , I crawled under the steps at the entrance of the house . Quickl , I pushed my son into the narrow area and I crawled behind him . I used a rock to cover the entrance . The ki ler came to the building , but did not see us . He imm diately ran into the house of the Christian Kuzma and his wife . They w re in shock and didn 't understand why the German was looking for Jews in their home . The Ge man insisted that there were two Jews hidden in their home . He had seen them with his two eyes . The co fused German ran to find other killers to assist him in looking for us . Meanwh le , the wife of Kuzma , who had realized where we were hidden , covered the opening with the pigs ' trowel . After short time , the German returned , accompanied by a few policemen . They s arched diligently inside the house . When t ey didn 't find anyone , they left the home disappointed and angry . From m hideout , I could see the boots when they came in and when they left . After he killers left , the wife of Kuzma came to me and tried to comfort me , pretending to talk to the pigs eating from the trowel . She as ed me where my husband was and expressed her sorrow that he was not with us in the hideout . After few hours , the Germans set the ghetto homes on fire . Huge f ames roared from the wooden homes . The fi e spread quickly through the crowded homes . The ho se of Kuzma was in danger . The wi e warned me about the approaching fire . I told her not to worry . I prom sed her that for her good deed , noBy noon , all of the shooting had stopped . It see ed as if the Germans had found no one else to shoot . They c ntinued to look in the homes that had not burned , hoping to find hidden Jews . While ooking , they found dozens of Jews in hiding . From u der the stairs , I could see farmers with weapons taking from the bath house nine men and one woman . They u ed the back of the rifles to beat up the poor souls . With e es filled with tears , I recognized among those taken to their deaths , Avraham Levinson and Malka Kupkin . Shortl after , I saw Moshe Rivkin and Ben - zion Dvorman . They h d been hiding in the garden of a farmer , near the bathhouse . The fa mer had found them and given them up to the Germans . Once i a while , the wife of Kuzma would describe the horrifying events that she saw . She sa d that most of the people that had been caught were taken to an open pit like sheep to the slaughter . Among he few that walked to their deaths with their heads held high and threatening the Germans with vengeance were the sister of Doctor Sliver and Fanya Barbakov . These wo women stood out amongst the rest for their education and character . They m rched on the last road for martyrdom , the same weathered way that ancient martyrs walked . For tw days and one night , we lay under the steps of the house . We bar ly ate or drank . Kuzma nd his wife were very poor farmers and during those days , it was hard for them to get food even for themselves . The wo an did give us a piece of dry bread , but my child refused to eat . $ ^ bus During the second night , Kuzma told us that we had to escape since the Germans had brought in trained dogs to search for Jews . Kuzma walked in the dark to find a safe way through the alleys and returned to tell me which way to take to peacefully leave Druya . Luckily , it was a rainy and dark night . We walked through the gardens and fields , climbing fences until we reached a shallow part of the river . I was carrying my son on my shoulders and I had a stick in my hand that I used to check the depth of the water . I was able to cross the river safely . I wanted to arrive at the house of Petrovsky . Many times , he had promised us that he would come to our aid when troubles came . It was near midnight when I came close to his home . When I looked through the window , I was in shock . A group of totally drunken German soldiers were sitting by his table , playing cards . I immediately ran off and continued to the river Staiky . After much tribulation , we arrived at the house of the farmer Maslyakov . I had hidden here before the liquidation . Before I knocked on his door , I thought that perhaps it would be too dangerous to hide in his home since many of the villagers knew that Maslyakov hid Jews in his house . There was no doubt that someone would tell the Germans and that his home would be searched . I had to let my little son know about the worries , so I told him that his father had given this farmer some valuables to keep until these turbulent times passed . My child answered that we shouldn 't ask this farmer for help because the farmer might want to kill us in order to keep our belongings . I decided to try my luck with other farmers . I went to the village Shalcin and knocked on the door of a farmer 's wife , who had known me a long time . She only gave me a piece of bread and urged me to leave since the Germans were still searching for Jews . She told me that only yesterday , some farmers had given Israel Baron and Leibetske Katsef to the Germans . As dawn came , we arrived at the village Seromshchina . Since it was already light , we hid in a small building that was used as a bathhouse . We crawled inside the oven and found many stinging insects , worms and other vermin . The stings made every part of our body ache and my son lay there quietly , crying from the pain . We could hear the sound of the Germans looking for Jews . One of the killers suggested that they search the bathhouse , but another said that they had already searched and found no one . Once it was dark , we left the bathhouse . Our legs were numb from lying down for so long and we had difficulty walking . After recovering , we went to the village Potashnia . I had great pain in my legs and Meirke had wounds from the day that we escaped from the ghetto . These wounds had become infected , so I told him to use long strips of cloth to cover his wounds . Limping and in great pain , we arrived at the village , where a loyal friend by the name of Stepha Sokolovskaya lived . I remembered that she had moved to a new home , but I did not know which one . I was very upset that I had not taken the time to visit her new home before all these troubles had started . I was very miserable . To ask anyone would have been to ask for a sure death . All of a sudden , I remembered that Stepha had taken a large amount of big nails . At that time , I had asked her why she needed the nails and she had responded that she needed them for the door and to build some steps in front of the house . Immediately , I started looking for an old home with new steps . I found such a house , but I was not sure it was the house of Stepha . After looking in the through the window , I saw some pails and I recognized them as a gift that I had given her . I knocked and after a short time , Stepha answered the door and she could hardly believe her eyes . I asked her for shelter and she said , Meirke was like a son to me the moment that he was born . had held him in my arms and whatever happens , I will treat him like my own son . S e gave us food and drink and then we hOne day , a farmer entered the barn and saw us . I had known this farmer for a long time and usually , I would have trusted him . H pretended that he had not seen us and immediately left . I told Stepha about this and we decided that it would be best that we not stay in the barn and instead hide in the attic of our home . T is new hiding place forced us to be in total quiet . T e attic was a very difficult place to stay since there were many rats and they bothered us all the time . L ke this , we passed a few more weeks . O e day , Stepha came to us and she let me know what had happened to my husband . Y kutiel Aharon had been killed by the murderers ' bullets while escaping from the burning ghetto with the baby in his arms . A ter some time , Stepha heard that the neighbors suspected that she was hiding Jews . O e day , from the attic , I saw two German soldiers accompanied by two policemen in a horse and buggy . T ey were going in the direction of the house . M child also noticed them and we became very frightened . I thought that our fate was sealed . M child started crying bitterly and begged me to find a way to survive . M heart almost broke , but once again , our good luck came through for us . T e Germans stopped at a farmer 's house next door and searched . T ey found no Jews in hiding , but they found plenty of Jewish possessions and valuables ( that they had either stolen from Jews or been given by Jews for safekeeping ) . S nce there were so many valuables in that house , the Germans were very busy loading the carriage . F nally , they left in a hurry , probably wanting to hide the valuables for themselves . D ring the many hours that they searched the house , Stepha was extremely fearful . A ter the danger had passed and we were fine , Stepha , one of righteous gentiles , came and said to me , Who should I thank for being saved ? My Jesus Christ or the god of the Jews ? I a swered , I think our salvation came from the pure prayer of an innocent child reaching the heavens . As wi ter came , we could not stay in the attic any longer . The D ring winter , Stepha ( like all farmers ) put the chicken indoors to keep them warm . There was no real floor in this place and it was covered in feces . This ide - out was absolutely awful . We la on this ground covered in animal waste . Above our heads , ashes also fell from the furnace . The a r was very smoky and murky in such a way that it stank . The f ct that my little son and I survived in these conditions for a few months is a testament to the limitless human ability to survive . Durin late night hours , the good - natured Stepha helped us out of the crawlspace so that we could breathe a little fresh air and stretch out our legs . Howev r , every time we left the hide - out , we were not able to stand on our own . Steph would help us walk , but we also had to use the walls and furniture to support us . We ne er risked sleeping in the house , fearing that uninvited guests would arrive , even at midnight or early in the morning . view $ Many Jews had given their valuables to their non - Jewish farmer friends so that in case they survived , they could get it back . My Aunt Feige had given her belongings to a farmer from the village Potashnia , where we were hidden . Most of the farmers who had taken in Jewish belongings for safekeeping expected that no one would survive and that there would not even be anyone to inherit it . This particular farmer had done some investigation and found out that all of the members of my Aunt Feige 's family had been murdered . However , he had suspicions that I had survived and was hiding somewhere . Since he didn 't want any heirs to come claim the valuables , he tried very hard to find me so that he could inform the Germans and make sure no heirs would survive . He knocked on Stepha 's door at midnight and Stepha was shocked that he was at her doorstep at such a late hour . She asked him what he wanted and he gave her a nonsensical answer , but Stepha understood what he really wanted . The farmer was very upset that he could not find us . In his anger , he went to the Germans and said that he was almost sure that Stepha was hiding my son and me . They were just about ready to check the house , but it seems that heaven took care of us in a special way . Since this was wintertime and it was very cold , Stepha kept something burning in the furnace that we hid under . This was the night of the first of February . I woke up extremely hot and choking on smoke . Immediately , I realized that cinders had fallen on the hay that we were sleeping on and it had ignited . I immediately got out of the hideout and woke Stepha . The fire was spreading quickly , but Stepha was too afraid to call her neighbors for help since Meirke and I had to go hide in the barn . She could not do anything . By the time we were ready to leave , important minutes had passed and by the time the neighbors came with buckets of water from the well , the house was engulfed in flames . Stepha had quickly erased our footsteps in the snow that went toward the barn . I don 't need to tell youI felt that it was very dangerous for us to stay in the barn itself , so I decided to hide in the attic of the barn . I could not find a ladder to the attic , under which was standing a cow . I suddenly had a good idea . My son Meirke and I stood on top of a cow and got up to the attic . Only smoke and ashes remained of the house . The farmers who helped fight the fire returned to their homes and Stepha entered the barn . I could see that her face was wet with tears , but I could still see a look of satisfaction on her features . She pretended to talk to the cow and said that the house had been lost by fire . While the fire was being fought , the farmers had told her that the next morning , the Germans had planned to search her home . If it weren 't for the fire , they would have discovered us and she would have gotten a death sentence too . Good - natured Stepha 's happiness at not being discovered mixed with her sadness from losing her home . For two days , we lay in the attic of the barn . It was extremely cold ( minus twenty degrees ) . If we hadn 't lain underneath the haystacks , we would have frozen to death . I did not want to start looking for another hideout so soon , for fear that the killers would find out that we had been hidden at Stepha 's house . I decided to stay there for a few days , but poor Stepha was now practically starving and she could not give us any food . After two days , we had to leave the barn . My son 's shoes had been lost in the fire and the only clothes that I had for him was my old sweater . I used the sleeves as pants and shoes for him . Using the remnants , I covered his little body . Stepha gave me boots and thus , we left in the direction of the village Stuyuki . We had a good family friend living there , he once served as a medic in the Polish army by the name of Vladislav Sokolovsky . It was on the other side of the river that crossed Potashnia . We walked on top of the ice that covered the river and to my bad luck , I did not notice a weak part in the ice . I fell in and it was only a miracle that I did not drown . I was in shock , wet and shaking from the freezing water . Immediately , my wet clothes became frozen . It was fortunate that we were close to the home of Sokolovsky . I knocked on his door and he recognized me from my voice . When he saw me frozen like an icicle , he almost fainted from emotion . Sokolovsky welcomed me into his home and immediately brought me clothes to change into . Since he was a medic , he took very good care of us . We lay close to his big furnace and we were revived . Sokolovsky went around looking for other clothes to us . He knew about the death of my husband and other two children , so he was willing to risk his own life to provide us with shelter . Meanwhile , daylight came and we had to leave his home before his children woke since we did not want them to find out about us . I wore the clothes of his wife and Sokolovsky put Meirke in a big basket . In this way , we went out to the barn in his yard . This barn was also used as a supply store . We climbed into the attic and hid in a dark corner , where we had a view of the village . Sokolovsky gave us very good food . He would come often and tell me news of the war . We stayed there for three weeks . One night , I lay there awake and heard suspicious sounds . It sounded like someone was trying to climb up , but there was no ladder to the attic . Whoever was climbing was trying to use some pegs on the wall , but he failed and fell hard . It sounded like he was wounded and I could hear his painful moaning . Finally , he seemed to recover and he left the barn . In the morning , when Sokolovsky entered the barn , he immediately noticed that something was not right . He quickly understood what had happened . It had been one of the neighboring farmers who was very suspicious of he was hiding Jews . The night before , the farmer had arrived at his house forSokolovsky said very apologetically that he was too fearful to hide us here anymore , but he assured me that he would find us a new hiding place . I advised him to go to the farmer by the name of Vladimir ( nicknamed ; Vlatshka ) Paskevich who lived in the village on the other side of the river . Mr . Paskevich had bought from my father a few years ago a home and a store . Ever since that day , they had been good friends . After some discussion , Paskevich agreed to let us hide in his house . On a very dark night , we left the house for a journey of two kilometers . After we started walking , we heard the sound of barking dogs from all directions . I was very surprised to find so many dogs running in an open field , instead of guarding the homes of their owners . In the dark , I saw the shining eyes and realized that they were not dogs , but angry wolves looking for prey . The shining eyes seemed to come closer and closer and I was very fearful . I realized that the fields were filled with haystacks , so we decided to hide underneath them . We immediately went inside the stacks and for some reason , the wolves left us alone . I decided that I could not risk our lives like this and I returned to the barn of Sokolovsky . I found out that Sokolovsky was also worried since he had heard the sounds of the wolves and was sure that they would harm us . He felt very guilty for sending us out in such a night . When he found us alive in his barn , he was very happy . The next night , he walked with us until we got to the river . He told us where to cross the river without endangering ourselves and then he returned to his house . We arrived at the village and at the last minute , I realized that it was guarded by two people . We had to turn back , but I could not go back to Sokolovsky . We went back to Stepha , who now lived with her sister . In the dark , we entered their barn and hid there . In the morning , Stepha saw us as she entered the barn to milk the cows . Stepha and I started crying and I apologized profusely for coming back here . I promised that I would stay only until the river became frozen again . Even though Stepha was very poor now , she was still a true friend and agreed that we could stay as long as we needed . We stayed there for eight days and during those days , Stepha would beg for food from the neighboring farmers and she gave most of the food to us . Some of the farmers hinted that they were suspicious that she was going to give the food to Jews . In the meantime , Pashkevich prepared his house for our arrival . He even fired his maid and the two workers that labored in his yard . The first night after the river froze , we were on our way . Despite the fact that Pashkevich expected us , he did not recognize us and could not believe his eyes . The pain and the horrible conditions that we had lived in had changed my face , making me seem like a different person . We hid in the barn in Pashkevich 's yard . He bought new clothes for us and twice a day , when he entered the barn to feed his horses , he would bring us food . His neighbors were very surprised that a farmer who was so well - to - do had fired his hired help and started to take care of his own animals . Pashkevich was very clever and provided reasons that did not arouse suspicions . One day , a female neighbor entered the barn unexpectedly . She noticed Meirke jumping on top of the hay . She became extremely fearful and went to Pashkevich and said that he had a little ghost in his barn . Pashkevich and his wife ( named Marila ) assured this foolish neighbor that they would go pray in the barn to drive the ghost away . He made sure to tell the woman not to say anything to other people because they would want to burn the barn . Pashkevich did not trust her promise and he decided to transfer us to the home of his brother Stephan , who also agreed to risk his life to give us shelter . He also took great care of us . One day while we were hiding there , a unit of Jewish partisans entered his home and demanded food supplies . Stephan begged them to not take everything he had since he was hiding a Jewish woman and his son in his home . The Jewish partisans were very cruel to him , taking everything from him since they did not care at all about our fate . In great shock , he came to me and told me about their behavior . He said , I am endangering my life for Jews and look at how these partisans treated me ! I was very ashamed and did not know what to say . D spite this incident , he did not tell me to leave his home . A ter a while , some non - Jewish partisans also arrived at his house and demanded that he give them food . A ain , he told them that he was hiding Jews in his house and begged them not to take all of the food . T e commander of the partisans had said that he could not take with him a woman and a child into the forest , but agreed to leave some of the food . O e morning , we were not careful enough and we came down from the attic . A that moment , the daughter of the family saw us . S e became very afraid and started yelling , There are partisans hiding in the barn ! Her mother tried to calm her down , but she kept yelling . Her mother told her that the entire family would be killed if she didn 't quiet . < < We were forced to leave this house and returned to his brother Vlatshka . Many of the farmers in this area collaborated with the Germans . Some of them knew that I had survived and suspected that I was hiding somewhere in the village Potashnia at the home of one of my friends . The Germans kept looking for me , one day , they arrived at the home of Pashkevich , accompanied by many collaborators . From the attic , I noticed them coming to the house . At first , they looked inside Pashkevich 's house and it seemed like our end was near . I don 't know where this idea came from , but I decided to break some of the wood pieces in the roof . I was able to do it and the hole faced the field . Meirke jumped first and I was right behind him . It was a height of three meters and we were bruised by the fall , but otherwise fine . We crawled on the ground until we reached high foliage . From there , we started running into the forest . When the killers entered the barn , Pashkevich and his wife were extremely fearful , afraid for their lives . The search in the barn seemed to take forever . They couldn 't believe it when the Germans left the farm empty - handed . They had survived a sure death . For many hours , we lay under a bush in the forest . Meirke was very fearful and cried bitterly . He started asking me , Why do they hate us ? hy do they want to kill us ? hy do we always have to be afraid ? hy can 't we be free like the birds in the forest ? W at could I answer ? Before night arrived , we heard sounds of children talking . I looked under the bush and recognized the three children of Pashkevich . I approached them very carefully , not wanting to scare them . I asked the oldest daughter to let her mother know that we were hidden in the forest . The mother was happy to know that we were fine . She immediately brought some food to the forest for us . After we ate and recovered , the woman , who like her husband had not lost her humanity , told us to return to the home . She said that since the Germans had already searched , they would not be suspicious and look again . Just in case , she suggested that we shouldn 't return to the barn . We should instead hide in an old building that stood far away from their home . It was only used during the fall to clean the raw flax material . At night , we arrived at this abandoned building . Since the family needed a reason to go to this building , they made it into a barn for the sheep . Every morning , when they would take the sheep to the meadow , they would bring us food . They did the same when they brought the sheep back to the barn in the evening . During the season when the laborers came to clean the raw flax , we had to lie quietly in the attic . We were forced to listen to the conversations of the laborers who worked there . One of the most common subjects was the fate of the Jews . They would often tell stories about Jews being discovered in hideouts , about who had informed the Germans and about who had gotten a death sentence . Many times , I heard them talk about my father . One time I heard one of the laborers say that the family of Papkin had perished except for the daughter Libe who was hiding somewhere . She suggested that they should find my hiding place so that they could get some salt as a reward . I shook all over upon hearing such a thing . Meirke also listened to the stories . One time he heard them talk about a Jewish woman who had abandoned her two little children in the bathhouse and then looked for another shelter just for herself . This story made my child very afraid since he thought that I would do the same . I had a hard time convincing him that all of our suffering was just to save his life because I wanted someone who would continue our family line and remember all that had happened . For two months , we hid in this building . One day , a partisan unit arrived at the house of Pashkevich to obtain some food . The farmer received them happily and gave them a good meal . Since they seemed to like him , he told them about all that had happened to me since I escaped from the burning ghetto . The partisans said that they had already heard rumors about a very brave woman and her little son that the Germans had been looking for . The head of the partisans asked to see me and Paskevich took him to the attic . I asked the commander for permission to join him in the forest . For a long time , the partisans talked amongst themselves , discussing whether they should take me . A small child running around in the forest would cause them much trouble . Even the partisans who wanted us to come with them were fearful that the forest would be less safe for us , that we would fall into the hands of the killers . They finally decided to take us to a distant village where nobody knew about us . This would be a safer shelter for us . The partisans hid us in a carriage and thus we left with emotional goodbyes the house of Vlatshka Pashkevich and his wife . In deep sorrow and heartache , I want to tell you about the fate of this brave man who had saved our lives . Some farmers who had collaborated with the Germans gave testimony that he had helped to hide Jews . The Germans arrested him and sent him to a labor camp , from whence he never returned . After the war , his wife and I went to a lot of trouble looking for his whereabouts . We looked for him everywhere in Belarus , but we never found him . The partisans left us at the home of a farmer that I knew by the name of Paniznik . He had an isolated farm about fifty kilometers from Potashnia . This farmer knew my father and respected him . We stayed in his home for many months . When the Germans started a blockade against the partisans , Paniznik hid us in bunkers that he dug in the forest . During the time that we stayed in the forest , we met many groups of Jews and Christians who were hiding in the area . I begged them to let my son and I join them , but all of them turned us down because of the young age of my son . They thought that he would be a burden during such a time of difficulty . One day , I met a group of non - Jews . At this time , we were totally exhausted and with much tearful begging , I asked to join them . They refused , but I refused to listen to them . We kept walking behind them . One of them even threatened me , saying that if I did not go away , he would kill us . He actually tried to do what he said . Despite Meirke 's begging , he threw a grenade at us , but it did not explode . It seemed like fate wanted us to survive . We later found out that this group had encountered a German patrol and most of them had been killed . In retrospect , it was good that we had not gone with them . As time passed , we were very hungry and cold in the forest . Often , we would wake up in the forest covered in the snow . I do not have the energy to tell of all the troubles that we endured in the month before liberation . How did we suYekutiel Aharon |
They are repaving the street in front of where I work ! Ugh ! It has been a mess trying to go anywhere on that street ! Luckily in order to go home I can go down the side street by my store and not have to go on this street since I live on the same side of town as my store is on . But this is the main street in our town and so has really messed people up . Here they are paving right in front of my store . I sure will be glad when they get done with all this paving . This morning I went up to Hardee 's to get a biscuit before work and didn 't think I would ever get back down this road ! Unfortunately Hardee 's is located on this road so I had no choice but to drive on it . My friend , Linda , came by my store for a little while yesterday . She is planning a High School Reunion and wants to make a power point slide show of some of the old pictures of her classmates . She needed me to show her how to do this . So I did . That Linda is something else ! I laugh the most when I am with her ! It feels so good to laugh . Anyway , Linda brought by a couple pictures for me to see and I borrowed them so I could scan them into my computer . Here they are . First is this picture of Linda 's dad and some of the crochet pieces he has done . Yes , he crochets ! The framed Last Supper up on the wall is huge ! It is done in Filet Crochet . She said he as done several of them in different size threads ! There is hours and hours of work in one of those ! I hope to go over to her dad 's with her one day and meet him and see more of his work ! This is a picture of Linda 's mom and my Aunt Doodle ( one on right ) . Linda said they were the best of friends . I know it is very light , but I think it is so neat ! This is an old family photo and I am not really sure who it is . Linda didn 't bring this one . This is one of my own . We have been trying and trying to figure out who it is . I thought it was my great great grandfather , but everybody else who actually knew him say they don 't think so . They said he didn 't have horses either . So now I am wondering if maybe it is his father . If anyone has any ideas let me know . Last , but definitely not least , is a picture of Amber and her rag dolls ! She was 1 - 1 / 2 years old when this picture was taken . I made her the rag dolls and the dress to match . I am so glad to have this picture as the rag dolls got thrown away by accident . Notice the little couch she is sitting on . It is just a big piece of foam cut in the shape of a couch and covered with fabric . When I was a little girl my dad brought it home to me . A foam salesman came to my dad furniture plant and he had the couch and a chair so that he could show my dad and his brothers the type of foam he had . My dad somehow got them from him and covered them with fabric for me . I just loved them ! They were perfect for my dolls . The chair eventually got threw away , but when Amber was born my dad recovered the couch in new fabric and she played with it for years ! It finally just wore out and we threw it away , too . Tara told me the other day that all we have are pictures of the three kids and Hubby . That I am never in the pictures . I told her that was because I was always the one taking the pictures ! So this afternoon I got Hubby to take a picture of me and our the kids ! So here is Amber , Me , Keith & Tara . My daughters , Amber & Tara , came by where I work today for me to see how Amber looked and take some pictures of them ! Now why , do you say , would I need to see how Amber looked ? Well , Tara had done her hair and make - up . Amber doesn 't usually straighten her hair or wear make - up . Tara had straightened Amber 's hair for her and did her make - up . She also parted Amber 's hair on the side instead of the middle like Amber usually wears it . I think they both look very pretty ! That 's right , my baby , Keith , is turning 15 today ! Now he will be able to get his learners permit and every time I go somewhere he is gonna want to drive ! Keith is my youngest . All my kids are growing up so fast ! Here is a picture of Hubby 's Mama , Pam , holding Keith . Notice the red booties on Keith 's feet . I crocheted them . He grew so fast that it seemed I was crocheting him a new pair of booties every week ! This is a picture of Keith and his Bun . He loved this bunny and carried him everywhere he went . By the time he stopped carrying him around that poor bunny was falling apart . I have sewn holes up on that bunny so many times that he probably doesn 't have any thread left on him that is original ! I will post pictures of him and his cake later . We are gonna cut it tonight . I baked it last night and Keith iced it . He loves to ice cakes ! I just think he likes to eat the remnants of icing that are left over ! These Mondays just keep on rolling around ! I love the weekend but they seem to pass by too fast . Last week I decided to start researching my family tree more . I don 't know if I mentioned that a lady and her husband , who are from Michigan , were way down here in South Alabama doing research on his family . The family name they were researching happens to be my family name and when they stopped in at the museum in Grove Hill the lady ran into this lady at the library of the same last name ! She called up my cousin , well actually my 3rd cousin , Minnie Mae and the lady talked to Minnie Mae about our family . I 've mentioned Minnie Mae to you before . Actually Minnie Mae and my grandfather were first cousins . Minnie Mae called me and told me about the lady and we got to discussing out family tree again and it just made me more fired up then ever to trace out line back . Minnie Mae and I have been doing research on this for a few years now and have run into a brick wall it would seem . We can 't seem to get past my great great great great grandfather ! Now that is a lot of greats isn 't it ? ! We just can not find out much about him . I went up to Minnie Mae 's house this past Saturday and it was a blast visiting with her . She is 86 years old and sharp as a tack ! That woman forgets nothing ! And she remembers names and people and their children a whole lot better then me ! We were discussing these ancestors in this book I have that Minnie Mae has borrowed twice and read and made notes out of and I have the book with me all the time and yet she was naming off these people and their kids and siblings and I was having to look in the book to find them cause I couldn 't remember what child belonged to who , but she sure did ! I just sat there with my mouth hung open ! I am gonna be taking a couple days off work here in the next couple weeks and Minnie Mae and me are gonna go to the court house in Wilcox County , Alabama and look up information on our ancestors . I am sure glad she is going with me . She will be able to remember a lot of stuff ! Me , I went on line to the North Carolina Department of Archives and History to try and find some information on my ancestors . Well , they want you to fill out a form and send it in along with $ 20 . 00 per name , per category ( birth , death , marriage , etc . ) searched ! So if they don 't find out any information you are just out the $ 20 . 00 ! There were like 15 categories on this one form . That would be like $ 300 . 00 just to have one name searched in all those categories ! I just couldn 't do that . If I lived in North Carolina it wouldn 't cost me , except for maybe copying fees . I can understand that it takes someone time to do a search and I would be willing to pay some but what they want is a little much . Here in Alabama I went on line to our Dept . of Archives and History and they , too , had a form . I printed it out , sent them $ 15 . 00 and they searched all their departments for any information on my great great great grandfather and sent me several pages of photocopied items they found . Now that was a much better deal ! I even got information I didn 't even ask for . You see I had been trying and trying to find out when my grandparents got married and was not having any luck . So when Alabama sent me this information on my great great great grandfather they sent along a list of early Alabama marriages and there was my grandparents marriage on the list ! How lucky was that ? ! Well , I am sure all this research stuff is boring so I 'll stop . I did start an embroidery project this weekend . I just did not think to take a picture to post . Will do that later . In looking through my notebook that I keep all my family research information in I came across some papers that I had copied of some things that my brother , Keith had drawn in his notebooks when he was in high school . I gave the original notebooks to my niece ( Keith 's daughter ) . But I had made copies of some of the things I liked . There was this one page that he had just sat and doodled . It was mostly circles and he had colored in some parts . It is hard to describe . I will just have to post a picture of it . I am sure he probably sat and did this in class when he should have been paying attention to the teacher ! Keith had a hard time in high school after our brother George died . He and George were just two years apart in age and very close . Anyway , I thought this doodle would make a neat looking embroidery so I traced it onto white fabric and started embroidering . Not all of us were busy doing things this past week ! As you can see from the photo below some of us spent lots of time sleeping . This is our cat , Molly . She loves to get on top of my pillows and sleep . Here she is on top of the stack of pillows . This is 5 pillows ! Yes , I said 5 ! No , I don 't sleep on that many , but I do sleep on 3 . Notice the embroidery on the top one . My mama did that . Before she died she was really into embroidering pillowcases . She gave them to everyone for gifts ! I love butterflies ! I have three quilts that I have made with butterflies on them . So when I saw some crocheted butterflies on Hideko 's blog ( Wind From The East ) I just knew I had to learn how to make them . I left her a comment asking her if she would share the directions with me . She did much better then that . She sent me 2 butterflies she had made for me to use as a pattern ! They are simply beautiful ! And I cannot think her enough for sending them ! A new laptop ! Yes , I finally got my new laptop ! It is a Dell , Studio 1535 Windows Vista . I just love it . It is just taking me some time to figure out things on it as it is a good bit different then my old laptop . This is the top of the cover ! It is Ruby Red ! I love red ! Here are some fabrics that I bought at Wal - Mart recently . They got in a lot of new , beautiful fabrics ! I mostly bought 1 / 4 yard increments . I did by 1 yard of a couple of them . Here are the fabrics I got when the kids and I went to Mobile shopping a week ago . I really love the cupcake fabric ! I have been wanting some , but have not seen any until I went to Joann 's that day . I was a little upset when I got home and discovered that Joann 's charged me for a whole yard of $ 7 . 00 fabric that I did not get and they charged me full price for some fabric that was on sale for 50 % off . Since I live 70 miles from Joann 's I couldn 't just take the fabric and receipt back and show them . I did call and tell them so the ladies cutting the fabric will be more careful in the future with other customers . The lady I talked to was suppose to have the manager call me the next day , but I never heard back from her . Oh well , I have learned to be sure and check your receipt before leaving the store . I had a long receipt because not only did I have this fabric on it I had my daughter 's fabric on it too . I don 't have a picture of her fabric . Maybe she will post it on her blog ! I hope everyone had a great Valentine 's Day ! Hubby gave me a beautiful card and a box of candy and took me out for supper ! So it was a great day ! As I think I have mentioned before , my daughter , Amber , loves to sew like I do . She has finally created a blog and has posted a couple of her projects on it ! I hope you will check it out and let her know what you think of her lovely work ! Just click here to find her blog ! Also I found out about this giveaway on another blog . It is to win a $ 25 . 00 gift card from Wal - Mart ! Who couldn 't use that ! Go here to check it out ! The kids and I had a nice weekend . Saturday we drove 70 miles to Mobile and went shopping and had lunch at Red Lobster . Amber said we should take pictures and post them of the good food they have there , but I left my camera in the car and so didn 't get to take any . Tara thought our waiter was really " hot " . He was a nice looking young man . He had only been working there for two weeks so he was still learning everything . We went to the book store and left Keith there while Amber , Tara , and I went to the fabric store . Tara doesn 't like fabric but she didn 't want to stay in the book store so she sat in the car and worked on some puzzle books she had gotten at the book store . Amber and I got lots of fabric ! I can 't believe I forgot to take pictures of it ! I will have to post pictures of it later . Yesterday we went to church and I sang my very first solo ! Now I have sang small solo parts in the choir , you know like just a verse . But yesterday I stood up behind the pulpit all by myself and sang the whole song . A song of my choosing . I was so nervous and my legs were so wobbly that I thought I would fall going back down the couple steps from the pulpit ! Everyone gave me lots of compliments , even my children . So I must have done pretty good . Last night I was looking up in my closet for some things and I looked into this one small tote . I found some of my grade school papers I had forgotten were in there . This little butterfly I made in first grade . It is made of dyed egg shells . I can still remember having mama save egg shells at home for me to take to school . I just loved my first grade teacher , Mrs . Dunn . Her husband was the manager of the grocery store that we shopped at . They were the nicest people . When I was in my twenties I attended church with their son and his wife and daughters . Mr . Dunn eventually got Alzheimer 's and I can remember Mrs . Dunn taking care of him . She was such a sweet loving woman . They have both passed away now and that is a great loss to this town . I also found this angel in the tote . I didn 't make her at school . I can remember she was in a coloring book and I traced her on white paper . I glued another piece of white paper to the back of the traced piece and put lots of glitter on it ! It came out pretty light when I photographed it . Her hair is actually gold . I remember making several of these . I just thought they were so pretty . Actually she is not an angel , but I thought she looked like one . I made them at Christmas one year when I was very young . When I was 16 my best friend , Debra , and I went to Mobile all by our selves . Mobile is 70 miles away and since our town is so small everybody went there to shop . Debra is now my Sunday School teacher . I have talked about her and posted pictures of her in my blog before . We each got one of these little elephants to keep forever and remind ourselves of our fun trip ! I asked Debra not long ago if she still had hers and she said yes . We have had these elephants for 33 years now ! I had put him in my tote , also . I have to tell you what happened to Debra and me . We rode all around Mobile , went by her grandmothers and everything . We were almost home , had just reached the city limits of our town when we had a flat tire ! Luckily this nice man stopped and changed it . We were so grateful that the tire went flat in our own town and not in Mobile or on the highway coming from Mobile . Now there are lots of service stations along that highway , but back then there were very few and they were far between each other . There was hardly anything along that highway back then . There are lots of businesses and such now . I will always cherish my memories of that trip . Yesterday morning when I got behind the pulpit to sing and looked up , there was Debra sitting there smiling at me . It really helped me . Debra is such a sweet person . I always know if I look at her she is going to be smiling at me . I am so glad we have remained friends all these years . There were a lot of years that we did not see or talk to each other as she had moved away to go to college and she married and we lost contact . But now she is back home and we are in the same church we attended together as teenagers and it is a good feeling to be back together again . I had a birthday ! I think I mentioned that January 27Th was my birthday . We just had a little cake at home to celebrate . Nothing fancy . Hubby ordered the cake and why he put Happy Birthday Diane & Mama is beyond me ! Amber said it looked like the cake was for two different people ! When I got home from work , hubby asked me if I had any candles ! I managed to find this # 1 candle so we used it . I figure it can stand for one year older ! All my kids gave me great cards and hubby gave me a card with some money in it to spend . I did get one gift , though . My best friend , Barbara , send me a scrapbook paper carrier and some fantastic stickers ! She is so sweet and never forgets me . Another friend , Debra , took me out for dinner for my birthday . My brother has mailed me a gift , but it has not arrived yet as he was late getting it sent off . I think I told ya 'll that we had made our living room into my dad 's bedroom . Saturday I had to get in there and rearrange some things to put my mama 's stereo back in there . This is one of those old wooden cabinet type stereos . The lid raises up and there is a record player and radio . This stereo had been in my family for as long as I can remember . I know it is older then me and it still works perfectly ! I have listened to many a record on it and my mama loved it . When we moved into mama 's house after her death and made the living room into Daddy 's room we put the stereo in this building on our land in the country for storage . Well , little did I know that hubby decided he needed to clean out some of this storage stuff and he gave my mama 's stereo away to a man he worked with . Now one day when hubby and I were driving somewhere together we were talking about this stuff in storage and I told him of a few thing he could get rid of , but I said the one thing I do not want to get rid of is my mama 's stereo . Well , he had already given it away and did not tell me . Another day we went out to this storage building for something and when I went in I did not see my mama 's stereo . When I asked him about it he told me he gave it away ! I started to cry and told him I just could not believe he had done that after I specifically told him not to give it away . He told me he had given it away before I told him that . I tell you , I could not stop crying . I was so upset . He immediately called the man he had given it to and the man said he had it in a storage building and would bring it back . Now this man lives 70 miles away . It took months before hubby and the man could get together to get my mama 's stereo back , but finally last week hubby got it back ! I was so happy ! So I had to clear out a spot in Daddy 's room to put it . I should have taken a picture of it , but did not think of it . I cleaned it good . And polished it . It has a few nicks that were not on it before due to these men hauling it all over , but I was so happy to see it . When While I was in Daddy 's bedroom I came across this pillow in a chair . I got Amber to go get my camera so I could take a picture of it . I have mentioned before about my brother , George , who died at the age of 13 back in 1967 . Well , there were tons of flowers at his funeral and on each thing of flowers was a ribbon . My Mama wanted those ribbons and so someone collected them for her . Then this lady , who worked for my Daddy doing sewing in his furniture plant , took the ribbons and made some of them into this pillow . It does not look at beautiful as it once did , but then it is almost 42 years old . The center of it did have a round red piece of ribbon in it but years and years ago one of our cats tore that out . I have said for years that I was gonna fix it , but I have not gotten around to it . Maybe I will do that tonight while hubby is at work . This is a close - up of the center . I will post a picture of it after I replace the center ribbon so you all can see . When my other brother , Keith , died in 1976 at the age of 24 , my mother collected the ribbons from his flowers , also . But the lady who had made the first pillow for George had moved away and we never had anyone to make a pillow out of them . The ribbons stayed in a closet in a brown paper bag for many , many years . Finally one day when I was cleaning out the closet for my Mama I asked her about them and she told me to just throw them away and so I did . I had to put clean out some of Daddy 's drawers Saturday , also , and I came upon this stocking that I had crocheted him . I made it probably 30 years ago or more . I 'm not even sure now , I can 't even really remember making it . But I know I did . I was into making things like this way back then and it has a label on it that I put on it that says Daddy . I took it in the den and showed it to Daddy and he said he had forgotten he had it . It just makes you feel good to find something you made back when you were young , doesn 't it ? This is Amber 's pin cushion . She had a needle with some thread on it stuck in it . When she picked it up a couple days ago the thread on the needle had formed a heart ! We just thought this was so neat , especially since it is almost Valentine 's Day . Look in the lower right corner of the pin cushion and you will see the heart ! Amber decided that she wanted to make a hussif . For anyone who doesn 't know a hussif is made to carry your scissors , thread , thimble , pins , needles and whatever else you want in . I had made a larger one and then a smaller one . She is working on making a smaller one for herself . She decided to make two log cabin blocks for the front and the back . She just finished the blocks yesterday afternoon and took a picture of them for me to post here . I think she did a fantastic job ! She is also going to make some smaller log cabin blocks to make a doll quilt with . Last night at nearly 11pm we got a phone call from my daughter , Tara . She called her sister 's cell phone instead of mine , but I was standing right there and heard her talking hysterically over the phone . She did not call my phone cause she was afraid I would be mad at her ! What a hoot ! She said she had just been in a wreck and we needed to come at once ! I threw on my clothes and Amber , Keith , and I ran out the door . Hubby was working nights and since she was not hurt I decided not to call him . As we were rushing down the road I looked over at Amber , who was putting on her shoes , and asked her where her pants were ! She was in such a panic that she had taken off her shorts to put on her jeans and then forgot the jeans ! She had put on her jacket , though . Well , I couldn 't take the time to go back home for her to get pants , so I told her she would have to stay in the car . She decided to take my sweater and button it around her waist so it looked like a sweater skirt ! I , however had to do without a sweater to wear and I had on short sleeves . It was a pretty chilly night out , about 40 degrees . Anyway , we get to where Tara was and she was standing there next to two policemen . I just wanted to cry , but I wouldn 't let myself cause I could not let myself fall apart . Tara came rushing over to me and hugged me . She was crying . Thank God she was not hurt at all ! She and her friend had been riding around and it was time for her to come home . Her friend wanted to go to this party so he went there and got out and told her to drive his car home and he would have these girls bring him by to get it . So she left the place and had not gone but a few dozen feet when she ran off the road and the car rolled over ! She ran off the road at this really bad curve . I mean this curve is more like a turn . There is only one small sign warning of it and it is a really dark road . I almost wrecked on this same curve when I was 18 or 19 . You come upon it before you realize it . She said she could not find her cell phone and could not open the car doorHere is a picture of the car before the wrecker came and turned it back right side up and pulled it out of the embankment . I am a Christian mother of 3 beautiful children . I have been doing handwork of some kind since I was 9 years old . My mother taught me to embroidery then . I love all kinds of handwork and have done a little of just about everything . |
We went put for dinner last night . I booked it via Toptable , my first ever booking via them ( we normally use G 's account ) . We arrived to discover that Toptable hadn 't actually told the restaurant . They were very nice about it and we had dinner etc , but I was decidedly unimpressed and will speak to Toptable about it at some point . I 'd better get my points . Grr … Anyway , we 're off to Madrid tomorrow . We have started to sort some stuff out , which has highlighted that G 's travel insurance documents have gone astray and the lack of an EHIC card ( the way we get reciprocal health cover in other EU countries ) . I may have to sort G out a new policy today … Well , hopefully we 're off to some decent sunshine and will be back in a week . Have a good week and don 't forget to change your clocks this weekend . On the way to work this morning I was standing up for part of the journey and a seat became available . I went to sit down and then saw a man get on with crutches , so I indicated the seat to him but he said he was fine and I sat down instead . I think he was actually just carrying the crutches ( for what reason I have no idea ) and didn 't actually need them himself . This makes me think that it is a ) a whole new dilemma that is the equivalent of " is that woman pregnant or just a bit overweight " and b ) a potentially excellent way to try and get a seat in future . I was somewhat perplexed by the story about the man who followed his Sat Nav so intently that he only finally stopped as he was about to go over a cliff edge … At what point do you begin to think that maybe there could be something wrong ? When you go off - road ? When you end up on a track ? When you end up on a footpath ? When you end up hanging off the edge of a cliff ? ? When are thinking that the view no longer seems familiar and you realise you have reached the gates of heaven ( or hell ) ? ? ? Perhaps he could use it to go to a petrol station and buy a map . The news on TV last night was so depressing . Dead police officers , pirates killing people and people dying under the care of the NHS . I really must give up watching the news . Fortunately next week I will be in Madrid and so won 't be able to understand a word of the news , so this may mean that I can exist in a bubble safe from any bad news stories . I ordered some Euros via the internet on Sunday and need to go and pick it up from a Post Office . They phoned and wanted to speak to me and when I called them back . They asked for my postcode and first line of my address , my date of birth and then we discussed the branch from which I was going to collect the money . All of this information was what I had given them so I wasn 't really sure how this was a security procedure . I couldn 't work out how any of this showed that I hadn 't made it up or was any more legit - and in fact I had used my parents address because I have never got round to changing my bank account details . Maybe I have missed the point somehow . . . So . . . G 's niece , N , did not go missing again . However , at the end of last week she threatened one of her foster carers with a knife and smashed up their car . She was moved to a children 's home about 50 miles away . On Saturday she went out in the little town she was now based in and got drunk , got caught shoplifting alcohol and then kicked a heavily pregnant care worker at the children 's home . Yesterday she was moved to secure accommodation . She didn 't get there until quite late yesterday so we don 't know how she is settling in . Maybe living in a more controlled regime will have a positive effect . . . On a lighter note , I was doing some colouring in with my nephew on Sunday and we were talking about when he normally colours in e . g . at nursery and that I don 't really get to colour in any more . He started to question me about this ( he is in the " why " phase ) and I said I didn 't really know but would ask my boss . Yesterday morning I asked my boss and he didn 't really have a good answer to this question . I may ask for " colouring in " to be one of my objectives in the next reporting year . I have come to the conclusion that I just do not like people . Not people in particular , but people in the general sense of * all * people . I was driving home from my parents ' house yesterday morning and someone pulled out in front of me on a roundabout . I pressed my horn and the children in the back of the car just started using various aggressive and rude gestures and I was now driving along behind them they continued to do this for several minutes until I turned off at another roundabout . The adults in the front of the car did precisely nothing to stop them and there is no way that they did not know what the children were doing . Sometimes I really dislike people . All people . Last weekend I was in a library in the centre of London and I wanted to look up a book on the database , but someone was using it . I stayed out of the way and looked at other books until he went up to the counter to speak to one of the staff and then I went over and started to search for a few things . He then came back over and was standing very close to me and obviously wanted to use the database again . I turned to him and said I felt uncomfortable with how close he was standing to me and him watching what I was doing . He said that he just wanted to look up a book as well , which rather showed he had been looking at what I was doing as there are lots of things I could have been doing on that computer . He declined to step further away and so I finished what I was doing and walked off . Sometimes I really dislike people . All people . After I left the library I went and had some lunch . I went to Eat and got some soup and sat in to eat it . Then the shop filled up lots and all the empty seats were filled except the one next to me and a single chair somewhere else . So someone sat in the chair next to me and her boyfriend positioned his chaired directly behind mine , blocking me in and proceeded to reach past me every time he wanted to pick up an item of his lunch . I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet , which I know is not always easy to achieve in thePosted by I thought the news of Natasha Richardson 's death was very sad . Not because she was famous but because something so simple , like falling over could end someone 's life and that despite being medically checked and everything seeming fine , she still died . It made me remember one of my uncle 's who as a teenager was struck on the head by a hurling stick ( he was Irish ) and I think briefly lost consciousness . For whatever reason he didn 't seek medical help - and nor did the teachers - and he bled into his brain and ended up with brain damage and severe epilepsy and had to live in a home for the rest of his life . That was home was actually in the UK not far from where we lived , so I did seem him a reasonable amount . He died when I was about 17 because he got pneumonia . A sad life caused by a simple blow to the head . Anyway , on a somewhat lighter note . There seem to be a lot of government related adverts on the TV at the moment , which I wonder if it is because of the economic downturn - companies are advertising less , so the government is doing it instead because it is cheaper but also is helping the TV stations . I have no idea if that is true , but there do seem to be a lot of official adverts . One I saw a couple of days ago was to do with the Countryside Code and I was struck by the sheep in the background of the advert . If G were a sheep then the sheep putting on a bit of a performance is the one that G would be . I have actually shown the ad to G who could see what I mean . . . You can also see the video here . * Is it normal to see sheep like attributes to your partner ? Probably best that I don 't know the answer to that one . . . I was on a very packed tube train last night and it was a bit difficult to read a book , so I just stood there staring into space and occasionally glancing at the tube ads . I was reading one for a Nivea for Men product and noticed a glaring error in it . This is not the identical ad , the one I saw was a shorter version , rather than full size poster , but this one has exactly the same error : " Who would of thought " ? ? ? ? " Who would OF thought " ? ? ? ? ? ? What is the world coming to ? ? ? ? It is " Who would have thought " . That is such a basic error . Nivea needs to have a serious word with their proof - readers - or start to employ some . I got a letter from the freeholder yesterday . She wants to carry out lots of maintenance to the property , which is fine , but she seems to want to charge us for various things that to my mind are for each individual owner to pay for rather than us all contribute . So things like the painting of people 's back doors or window frame . We are responsible for sorting out and paying for double glazing etc for ourselves , but people who haven 't done this and have let their windows deteriorate appear only to have to pay a sixth of the charge of maintaining their own windows , as we then seem to all be required to pay for their laxness . This doesn 't make sense to me . . . I read this story on the BBC . Basically there is a woman who knits jackets for battery hens . I actually know someone who does that . The woman I know takes in battery hens that would be destroyed and she makes little fleecy jackets for them because they don 't have many feathers and to help them build up their calcium levels she feeds them freshly prepared porridge each morning and puts raisins in it as well for a bit of extra sustenance . She also has two ancient tortoises and lots of guinea pigs - the latter being due to the guinea pigs sharing a cage for a while because she had been assured that they were both male . It seems she was mis - advised . Tonight G and I are going for dinner at some friends ' house and we are meeting their new dog . Their new not necessarily very house trained dog . This could be challenging . But if it comes to a fight between me and the dog to get to the food first , I reckon I 'd win . Yesterday at work it was so hot sitting at my desk . It was a pleasantly sunny day but the heat seemed to get magnified as it reflected off the glass behind where I sit and it just got hotter and hotter . I think it reached something like 17 degrees ( outside ) so I dread to think what it will be like in the summer when temperatures get higher . I may have to start wearing a bikini to work . This is not because it would make me cooler , but because it would make my colleagues run away screaming and I could then sit at one of their desks instead . G 's niece turned up yesterday . She phoned her foster carer and asked her to come and pick her up , which the foster carer did . Apparently she was rather filthy and she had a bath and something to eat and then a couple of hours later went out again and disappeared again . There was always the risk of that , but the foster carer can do nothing to restrain her and she can 't lock the doors etc so she has no choice but to let her go off if she wants to do that . I think if this carries on then G 's niece will end up in secure accommodation . I suppose in some ways the dilemma is that obviously we want to know she is ok , but we don 't want to give her lots of attention for doing something bad . She would be much better off with the foster carers who are very nice , tolerant and patient people and would give her much better life chances , but she would rather live in somewhat more precarious circumstances . But if people seem to take more of an interest in her when she is being bad then that might actually encourage her to be naughty , which doesn 't seem right . But then it also doesn 't seem right to ignore her when she is being bad , particularly if she might be in some form of danger . I 'm not really sure what the best thing to do is , but we are just trying to be consistent and to be positive when we deal with her , rather than giving her a hard time for not going home etc . Does it help ? I 'm not really sure . . . Anyway , it was my nephew 's birthday this weekend and so we went to his birthday party and ate lots of cake and had a nice time . My father was there , who drove me mad as ever . Now it seems that he is suddenly a life long Celtic support football , despite not actually liking football and also never having showed any interest in Celtic before . G is a big Celtic fan and so now my father talks about how " their " team has been doing recently , which I find odd ( and so does G I think ) . I also spent about an hour and a half trying to fix my father 's new DVD player , which he bought this week to replace the broken one . Posted by G 's niece is still missing . The police have been looking for her and have spoken to her as well ( as G said she is never likely to be a master criminal if she makes such a schoolgirl error ) , but they haven 't located her as yet . G has spoken to her each day to try and persuade her to go home but she insists that she is " fine " and " sound " . Oh to be 14 years old and seemingly not have a care in the world . . . Anyway . . . with thanks to the Vicious Chicken , here is a video in honour of Red Nose Day . On Tuesday night I watched the Horizon programme on How to Survive a Disaster , which I thought was pretty interesting . I think I am unlikely to walk the emergency route out of a hotel whenever I stay in one , but the programme had some interesting points about human nature and are worth pondering . - Some people died in a fire in Manchester in the 1970s because they were in the cafeteria at Woolworths and basically didn 't want to leave their uneaten food . - When the World Trade Center was struck by the planes , some people sat at their desks and finished e - mails etc and waited 30 or 40 minutes before they considered evacuating . - One firm , Morgan Stanley , lost very few employees on 11 September 2001 because they had practiced evacuating regularly so people know what to do and how to get out of the building . - Peer pressure is a big factor . Even if people see smoke etc , if no - one else reacts people will often stay in dangerous situations because they might be embarrassed if they " make a fuss " . Sometimes when the fire alarm goes off at work , I see my colleagues look about confused and I will just tell people to evacuate and as soon as someone had confirmed it is ok to go they get on with it and head for the fire exits , but they need that confirmation to go . There is a summary of the key points here . It could save your life . . . I got home to a rather stressed G last night . G 's niece is in care and has been living with a foster family . Things were looking as though they were going ok , but G got a phone call yesterday to say that N had run away . G did manage to speak to N last night and she just kept saying she was " fine " , but did ask G to put credit on her mobile phone . G agreed to do this as long as N went home . We 'll find out today if she did . G is really stressed about it all . N is in Scotland and so distance is a problem anyway , but G phones every week to keep up contact , but it can be quite difficult talking to a rather surly teenager . I won 't even go into how G 's family deals with it all , which is best described as somewhat unhelpful . We were hoping to arrange for N to come down and stay at Easter and are actually in the middle of going though criminal record checks etc so that we could get permission for her to come and stay . But that is all looking very unlikely now and so we are going to have to work out what to say to N because we don 't want to let her down , but don 't think the social workers would give permission for her to come and visit regardless of anything else . So we 'll see how it goes . Things had been looking more positive but now seem to have descended to a new low . Hopefully we 'll find out today that she at least went home last night because that would be progress . * sigh * I had a busy evening yesterday sorting out various things . I needed to sort out my car insurance , as it is due for renewal soon . I had found a policy that was about £ 20 cheaper . So I phoned my insurance company and asked if they would match it . The woman said " I 've put it into our database and we can 't match it " . She may as well have said " computer says ' no ' " . I queried that for the sake of £ 20 they weren 't interested in considering this and she said no . I took out a policy with another company instead . Annoyed customer . I also phoned my mobile phone company . For several years I have renewed my contract and they have given me a big reduction on my line rental as I haven 't had a phone upgrade ( I just buy a new phone if I need one ) . The man sorted it out straight away and , without me even asking , said he 'd credit back to my account the discount I could have had this month if I 'd renewed the contract earlier . Happy customer . Today I am off to the Midlands , so I have a nice leisurely start to the day , as my train isn 't for a while yet . I really like late mornings . I think I am a bit like a teenager who needs to sleep in . I wish I could have done that when I was at school … Another weekend over . We didn 't actually have much planned but when it came to it we seemed to do quite a lot . On Saturday we went for a walk . We were going to go to a park a few miles away but on the way there saw a sign for another park so went here instead . While we were walking we saw a bag thrown in the bushes and its contents scattered about so we picked it all up and then left it there until we were on our way back and then carried it back to my car . We then went to drop it off at a police station , but the one we went to was closed . So we spoke to a police operator , who was very nice and helpful , and ended up driving quite a long way to a police station that was open and dropped it off . They said they would try and find the owner and return it . I think there had been a lap top in it but there was no sign of that when we found it . I then went over to my parents ' house yesterday morning and tried to fix my dad 's DVD player . I had no success at all and just ended up disconnecting it all so that mum wouldn 't have to sort it all out if it needed to be taken somewhere to be repaired . My dad , as ever , did nothing towards fixing it and just wanted me to tell him what to do ( meaning what mum should do ) to get someone to look at it . Anyway , mum gave me some home made cake ( she seems to be in a baking phase at the moment ) and so that was very nice . It was a Victoria sponge , which is probably my favourite cake ( although I am not generally known to turn down any cake ) . We also did a major tidy up and thought of lots of things that we need to buy and sort out over the next few weeks . Fortunately G is off over Eater for longer than I am so it should mean that there is time to get people out to do various things . At least it 's only about three weeks until I go on holiday now . G and I were having a conversation last night about what I guess you could describe as " life chances " . G dropped out of school at 15 with no qualifications and worked for a few years in very low grade , poor paying jobs and then realised that this was not going to present many opportunities . So G went to college and got some Scottish Highers and then decided to go to university and got an undergraduate degree and then moved to London and did a Masters and then went on to study for a PhD . This was despite such support from G 's family such as comments like " why would you want to go to university ? Don 't you want to get a job ? " . I find it quite remarkable that G through a series of small decisions made what ultimately turned out to be significant life changes - and which also ultimately culminated in meeting me , which surely in and of itself proves that it was all worthwhile . But does also show that it is all downhill from here on in , as the high point of G 's life has now been reached . Anyway , I digress … that does often make me think that I need to make more choices about what I want to do and achieve with my life instead of letting it just drift along . We also do have the ability to change and to start afresh and to do things that we might never have thought possible . But we also can let inertia overtake us and do nothing . Every so often I quiz G about what made the difference and how it was possible to make such different choices about your life without any support or anyone really helping you to find the way and not really knowing what it will involve . I am a fairly risk averse person and so do tend to shy away from things that feel somewhat unknown or that might have a negative side - even if they also have a very positive side as well . As William Shakespeare once wrote : " Our doubts are traitors , and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt . " I still need to take that to heart . I sent an e - mail to someone at work yesterday because I was trying to track down someone 's payslip . We have a new system by which we no longer get paper payslips and have to look them up online , but if you are on maternity leave , a secondment etc then you still get a paper one . So I was trying to find one for someone who used to work for me who is on a secondment . The people who deal with these things for where I work are not always the most receptive to requests and this was certainly no exception . Not only was I trying to track down this one payslip but also flag up that perhaps others needed to be accounted for as well . I was trying to be constructive , but after sending a couple of e - mails clarifying the situation I got one back telling me that I " was accusing them of failure " and that the reason this problem had arisen was because both me and my head of unit had failed in our line management responsibilities and they can 't account for people who fail to carry out their duties properly . I was so unimpressed , I hadn 't been accusing them of anything . All I wanted to know was whether they had the payslip and pointing out that given this problem had arisen , perhaps it was a problem for others too . Clearly raising potential problems is not welcome though and is taken as a personal criticism . I did say that I would pass on their concerns about line management skills to my head of unit … G was coming home a couple of nights ago and got on a train that was at the terminus and was going to be departing in about five minutes time . It was raining so G used the connecting doors between two carriages to avoid going out in the rain at which point this voice said " what do you think you are doing ? " . It was the driver who was walking past and basically seemed to think that this was a big problem - walking between two carriages on a train through the connecting door , which didn 't even have a driver on it so was unlikely to be moving any time soon . Anyway , the driver made G read the notice stuck to the door . G Posted by I was talking to my friend whose wedding I went to a couple of weeks ago . They had just got back from their honeymoon in Scotland and he was telling me what a great time they 'd had . They 'd stayed in a cottage which sounded fantastic and I asked how they 'd found the place they stayed and he said " well we basically did a search on the internet for ' cottage ' ' Scotland ' and ' hot tub ' " . I now understand their priorities . Although before they got married they did discuss what they were going to have to focus on once the wedding was over and his ( now ) wife assured him that she would have plenty to do , as she would have more time to work on the new vegetable patch . Romance is not dead . I seem to have fixed my irritating internet problem and no longer have to switch off my virus checker in order to access the internet . I am now using " Super anti spyware " and it does indeed seem to be super - or at least better than the alternatives I had tried . Perhaps I should be following G 's lead and listening to the Paul McKenna CD , as I felt really tired yesterday . Perhaps it was just because it was a Monday , but in part I think it may have been that I seem to be worried about various things at the moment . Nothing big , not even anything important or imminent , just small and insignificant things that really aren 't worth worrying about . If you were to see me you wouldn 't think I was any different to normal , but somewhere below the surface things are whirring away . I think it 's a family trait and , unconnected to my current frame of mind , my sister commented says that she sometimes worries about things and that she thinks she got that from dad . I just wonder how much you can do to unlearn certain types of behaviour . I do believe that people have the ability to change , but I 'm not sure if that means that you learn to cope or you actually deal with the underlying issue . Perhaps it depends on what it is . I think part of the problem is that I have let my world get smaller and smaller over the last few months . The less you have going on in your life , the more the things that you do have going on become the focus of your life . So I need to get some more interests and do things that are more outward looking . I have a few things in mind and am also trying to arrange to meet up with a couple of friends , but regardless I need to change my perspective a bit . As somebody wise once said " who of you can add an hour to his life by worrying about tomorrow " . Or perhaps I just need to get more sleep . I had quite a busy weekend . It was my sister 's birthday on Saturday so we went over their yesterday and had lunch and ate cake and so on . It was all very pleasant , apart from spending time with my father , who I managed to argue with . This time over the rather pathetic issue of whether some food should be covered up while it was cooling . He tried to get G involved to decide the issue and then I got annoyed about that because he always tries to make people take sides and also the argument was nothing to do with G and dragging other people in was not helpful . My sister , surprisingly , didn 't get annoyed with me for having an argument with dad , but instead in a constructive way just told me not to let him get to me because he isn 't worth it . G has been sleeping so much better over the last week or so . I think the reason for this is … Paul McKenna . G has been feeling desperate about not sleeping properly because it has got so bad . I gave G a copy ( by request ) of Paul McKenna 's book " I can make you sleep " which also comes with a CD and within a day or so G 's sleep improved really noticeably . G now has much more energy and is feeling so much less tired . This is primarily due to listening to the CD rather then reading the book . I have no idea if it is the CD or just the psychological effect of thinking that this could make a difference , even if it is just a kind of placebo effect . The downside is that G has been a bit like Tigger in the morning , when I am not always at my most enthusiastic , and I have had to ask G to stop being quite to excited and enthusiastic a couple of times , but the difference is remarkable . I hope it is a long term change because sleep makes such a difference to quality of life . Anyway , if you have trouble with sleep , maybe it is worth a go … |
Looking for something different to read ? Something that may remind you of The Twilight Zone ? Something that makes you think about the world a little bit differently ? Then you will enjoy my self - published , short story collection , Is There More ? The world around us is more vast than we may believe . Look deeper . Push past the veil [ … ] For a while now I have been absent from this blog and the blogging world . That is because I have been hard at work finalizing the last details of my book ! ! I am very excited to announce that after over a year of hard work my short story collection , Is There More ? is officially available for sale . It is a collection of stories that I have been working on for years and am very proud of . They are stories set in our modern day world but with a slight twist that makes them seem unreal yet possible at the same time . The idea of the collection is to make you think and reconsider the world around you . The world around us is more vast then we may believe . Look deeper . Push past the veil of reality to find out what truly lies beneath . What you will find looks a lot like the world you see everyday , but a closer look shows you how much more there is to see . It is a world where the books on your shelves have voices , and they are not happy . A world where a person can be reset as easily as a computer . Somewhere you can open your door to find a " Choose Your own Adventure , " book waiting to take complete control of your world . It is a place where you may believe you know what is possible , but looking deeper shows you just how many possibilities truly exist . Turn each page and always ask yourself , is there more ? If you enjoy fantasy stories or stories with a slight twist you will enjoy these . It is available in both e - book version as well as paperback . The e - book is $ 3 . 99 and the paperback is $ 8 . 99 . Check it out on Amazon ! These are fun stories that will hopefully make you think a bit . I hope you enjoy . If you do pick it up and enjoy , mind leaving a review as well ? Thank you ! ! I heard his muffled cry from the bedroom . It was just a quick shriek at first . I listened and waited for it to escalate or to disappear entirely . When I didn 't hear another harsher cry I went back to the dishes . I was drying a plate when I heard the pained whimper . I put the towel on the side of the sink and my hands flat on the edge . Again I waited . I knew I should go to him , see what was causing that terrible whine that was starting to pierce my heart but another side of me was terrified to go to him . I had heard that devastated moan before , I knew exactly what was causing it . " Kelly , " he called . I turned toward the hallways , my decision being made for me . I walked through the short hallway to the bedroom . He was sitting on the ground , legs outstretched in front of him , head hung low . He looked like a child who just had his favorite toy taken away from him . Finally he spoke , " I thought I was doing well . I thought I was trying . Why me ? Why ? " he kept asking the last question over and over again . I couldn 't look him in the eyes , couldn 't give him an answer because I had no answer to give him . No answer at least that would make all this go away and would make him feel less like he was dying . " You know they have ways of making the decision They say they don 't make them simply . It hurts them too , " I told him . Such empty and rehearsed words . I knew exactly how they made their decisions and it was nothing short of throwing darts at a board . I didn 't say anything more as he cried himself into silence . I just stared at my reflection in the mirror that hung on the back of our closet door . I looked , at least to me , calm and put together . I was being the rock he needed right now . I was holding my boyfriend as he grieved the loss of his dreams . I was keeping my face straight and devoid of emotions to keep him calm . My mouth quirked up at the edges . I should have registered as wanting to be an actress instead of company assistant . I had learned quite skillfully how to hold back all the emotions that chased themselves around my mind . Right now I was breaking and I couldn 't show it . My love was watching his own world crumble around him and it was all because of me . I had caused all this pain and the worst part was that he didn 't even know . He blamed some featureless company , New Day , a name that made people shake when anyone even mentioned that place . He sat up and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand . " I 'm going to go make the arrangements . Get this whole hell over with , " he gave me a peck on my cheek and went to find his phone in the kitchen . I watched him go , leaning my head back against the bed and took deep breath . I let it out slowly , feeling my chest deflate . My heart calmed and I managed to hold in the tears that were stinging the back of my eyes . I hadn 't known what was I was doing when I had begun the project . They had only asked me to make a census type list at first . The wanted everyone 's name and registered dreams . I had done the task never thinking twice about what I was doing . They did this occasionally , made a quick list to see what the trend would be like and how the world could be changing soon . Usually it was just information to pass on to tech companies and medical personnel . Stuff like , a number of people have registered as wanting to rework the tablet computer to make life even more convenient , better alert the big technology companies and big wigs . Give them a heads up on who to follow and who could end up being a competitor sooner or later . Many people are now determined to scale the tallest mountains , better staff the hospitals nearby . The dream registry concept was kind of a passing joke throughout the country . No one knew why it had really started . Something about wanting to show the world the number of different and innovated dreams that Americans were working towards each and every day . It wasn 't mandatory to register but almost everyone did because when you did you got resources to help you . Usually it was spam papers from companies wanting your business but sometime it was useful stuff like conference notifications and new classes teaching what you needed to know . You did it without really thinking twice about it So I had never thought too hard about them taking a greater interest in the list . That was until they start making me track select groups of people . They all of sudden had a vast amount of information about what certain people bought and where they shopped . They knew who was taking classes , who was going to retreats to help them better themselves . They knew who was making new contacts and who was just sitting around not doing much . " We did not become the greatest by being lazy and waiting for the world to change around us . People here work towards what they want . We will ensure that , that practice continues . " It was just last year that I saw what I was helping them do . They took over every channel on TV and the radio and made the announcement . The president and CEO of New Day stood before his microphone and told the country about a new way of life . From that day onwards everyone would be watched though that wasn 't real new information since everyone knew they were being watched already . Spending would be tracked , visits to stores would be monitored . In every place you visited some of the people would be plants , sent to keep an eye on you . Not every single citizen would be watched but you couldn 't know if or if not you were being selected . Best to work and not to worry . If you worked and didn 't waste your time and the countries resources you would be perfectly fine . If it was determined you were not working towards your goal and you are not seen to ever begin the work properly you would be notified . There were no warnings . You would receive a call saying you were done and you could no longer achieve what you desired . You could not register for necessary classes , buy certain items or watch shows with the themes of what you had once hoped to achieve . You would be cut off from that portion of the world . Of course chaos had ensued throughout the country . Once the first calls came and it was seen that it wasn 't all a game it was too late they had completely closed their hands around our necks . We couldn 't do anything , we couldn 't get away . Who knew who was following you or how far their influence reached . Some rebelled but many began to work with vigor determined to never get that call . The land of the free became the land of the controlled and I had helped start it all . " Of course , " I told him . He nodded and went into the living room . I heard the muffled sounds of some sitcom . I waited for the renewed sobs when he flipped the channels and realized that he could no longer access the history channel , his favorite channel . Mike had registered as wanting to become a world renowned historian . He didn 't give any more details then that when he had done his paper work . That had made him an easy target . New Day loved people like Mike . They registered this huge and broad dreams with so many different parts to them that it was simple to say , " Nope , they aren 't working on this piece , lets end this . " People like Mike became examples for everyone else . Those who had very specific dreams with real details had a much better chance of never getting that call . Why I stood up and made my way to the living room I had no idea . Mike was watching a home shopping channel . " I 'm so sorry , " I said , surprised my voice was still strong . " I did all this . " I should stop talking right now . I was not allowed to say these words out loud . Why was I doing this to him ? I was all he had left and now I was taking even that from him . Did I want him to be completely destroyed ? What was I doing ? " I started this whole thing . That call you got ? I drafted it . I helped track everyone , made all the lists they use . I didn 't know what they were doing . I swear , " I didn 't move . He was watching me like I was an alien life form , speaking a completely different language . I wasn 't welcome here . I knew that . I knew I was being insensitive and I should leave right now . He was already having to be reminded with each hug that his life was now pointless . To have me looking back at him was going to be like being slapped across the face . But I still loved him and I needed to be here . If not for him then for myself . I was next in line . He looked up at me . I held out my arms and when he didn 't move I walk to him and wrapped him in a hug . A hug he did not return . I turned and went to the side room where his casket stood . This part was not New Day 's idea . It was all created by those who had gotten the call and it was their way of dealing . It was a way of putting an end to the whole ordeal . This was a way to bury the pain in some manner . Mike 's casket was pretty bare . His registration form and a few of his favorite articles about new discoveries were all that laid on the white cushions . " You can give me yours , " he said . There was the opportunity for one person to trade their dreams for another . You signed over your potential so someone else could succeed . I felt something snap in me and before I knew it was I was on the ground laughing so hard I could barely breathe . I couldn 't put a real thought together . Tears rolled down my cheeks and a sharp pains started in my sides . I finally gained control of myself and said from my place on the ground . " I can 't . I already achieved mine . I registered as wanting to help a company change the world . Exactly one year ago today I did just that , " I breathed out . He walked away without a word and I let the laughter and sobs fight each other for dominance as I laid on the ground completely broken I rubbed the ache in my chest again . My friends barely noticed , they were too busy ordering another round of drinks . They handed me a bright blue shot . I didn 't ask what was in it . It didn 't matter , I wasn 't driving and the goal was to stop thinking and not remember this evening . The plan was to black out the world for a little while and I was well on my way to accomplishing that goal . Rachel had told me , " I 'll make sure you survive the night , so have fun . " I trusted her . I wouldn 't wake up in an alley or on someone else 's lawn . I would wake up in her bed or on her couch and that was all that mattered right now . She knew I needed this night out . I needed to forget where I was and what had been happening over the last week . I had tried everything from binge watching mindless television to excessively working to keep myself occupied . Anything to ignore the bruises and the aches that kept appearing all over my body . If I drank until I couldn 't see straight then I could wipe this craziness from me . At least for one night . " You still here ? " I heard Rachel whisper in my ear . She was the only one I had told about what had started happening exactly a week ago . " No idea , that is the point of this . " I told her . I sucked down the pink concoction . It was sickly sweet but left a burn that I would be feeling for a while . I wondered as I rubbed my chest again if he / she was feeling the same effect . I laughed to myself . After what I had endured this was nothing for them . Hell , they might even be enjoying it . The world was starting to spin . I I had to hold onto the edges of my seat to keep myself from tipping over and landing on the ground . That is all I would need , a few extra bruises and bumps . I straightened myself and reached out for another drink . The sun was so bright , like it had been set to blazing . The birds weren 't singing this morning , they were legit screeching at me . And whoever was stomping around the apartment needed to quit before I jumped up and chopped off their feet . " Glad to see you are still with us , " It was Rachel . Did she have to scream ? Couldn 't she just whisper ? I waved at her and slid my head under my pillow , trying to muffle some of the chaos around me . The world muted but it was still too loud , I needed everyone to just go silent for a day . I felt a tug at my pillow . I tried to hold on but she was much stronger then me and at a better angle . She pulled it off and the world came back at me full volume . I tried not to cry . " No , " Rachel was tapping my arm . I pulled up my head , my tangled hair falling into my face and gave her a glare . She was grinning one hand held out with a two pills on her palm . There was a glass of water on the nightstand . " Take these and come into the kitchen with me . " " Don 't care . I let you have you fun last night . I let you drink yourself into literal darkness . I understood that you needed it for one night . I put you to bed . Now you have to deal with the after affects and I get my turn to help you , " she was still tapping me . " Take them . Now . " I groaned and sat up . I knew if I didn 't listen she would just get louder and more annoying . The woman wasn 't good with the word no , and either was I . We were probably the two most stubborn people on the planet and if we decided to battle it out we would be here for a while . I really just wanted to sleep and not to argue so I gave in . I followed her into the kitchen . On the dining room table there was McDonald 's fries and toast . I laughed to myself . She might be a stubborn bitch sometimes but she did know me well . This was why we were still friends . " Fine , " she snapped . She wasn 't even trying to hide her annoyance anymore . " Have you told anyone but me about the bruises ? Does anyone else know you 've been connected ? " I shrugged . My head was still pounding and my stomach was just stopping it swaying . I had no plan for any of this and I didn 't want to try to come up with one right now . My body was in revolt and I didn 't need my brain to be freaking out as well . One problem at a time . Once the physical side of me was calm again then maybe I could jump into the emotional hurricane , but not right now . " No shrugging at me and no more ignoring this . You have been avoiding this for a week . It is killing you . Last night you tried to literally drink it away and that worked so well . You need to go down and register , find him and work from there . You know you only get one connection and if you don 't find him you could lose him . Do you want that ? " she asked me . " What I want right now is a shower and then a nap , " I told her . " Thanks for the breakfast , " I picked up my keys and shoes . I gave her a one armed hug and headed toward the door . I was not going to argue with her when I felt like my head was going to split open . Did I really need a headache and nausea on top of everything else I had to deal with ? Did she not understand the concept of being connected ? What she did I felt , and vice versa . Then again I couldn 't really blame her ; if this was my pay back I could deal with it . I hissed as I laid a washcloth to my newest cut on my upper arm . It was angry red with dried blood around the edges . After a moment I pulled back the cloth and saw that much of the blood was gone . I laid a bandage over it and wrung out the cloth . I laid it over the edge of the sink and looked at myself in the mirror . My face looked perfect . There wasn 't a cut or bruise to be seen . From just my face you would think I was happy and safe . When I met people I gave them a big and genuine smile . My voice was alway happy and pleasing . You would have no idea that from the neck down my body was a disaster . If you saw my chest and upper legs , my shoulders and arms you would see how I really was . I kept that smile on my face to hide what was under my clothes . I had to hide it all . I couldn 't let anyone know . If they knew they would take her away and put her somewhere I couldn 't get to . They would treat me like a victim , reassuring me over and over again that it wasn 't my fault . I would get hugs and tears , pats on the backs and offers for condolences . None of which would heal the bruises , broken ribs or cuts . None of which could turn back time and keep her from losing control that one night that set flipped the switch . None of those words were going to help me fix her . They wouldn 't understand . I didn 't stay out of fear of her . Could she kill me if she wanted to ? Most likely . I have about fifty pounds on her , as well as much more muscle , but she was smart and cunning . She knew how to use what was closest , she knew how to keep me down and she knew that the last thing I would do was hurt her . She could get out of control but she was always able to pull back before she did any major damage . For her to survive , I needed to survive and she knew that . No one else would understand and I couldn 't have her branded as evil or cruel . She was just sick and I was the only who could help her . I had a price to pay for being beside her but I knew what I was doing . I had everything under control until this damn connection came into play . I expected the knock to come hours earlier . It was almost six when I heard the soft knock on the door . I didn 't act surprised when I opened it to find Rachel on the other side . " You wake up each morning with a new bruise or cut . You are my best friend , and not only do I not want to see you being hurt but someone else is obviously being destroyed as well . Do you want to lose your soulmate and end up being lonely forever ? Do you want to have their possible death on your hands ? " She turned and headed to the living room when I didn 't say anything . " What are we supposed to do exactly ? " Again I wasn 't in the mood to go into a stubbornness battle with her . Being used as a punching bag was getting old I did have to admit . I never actually felt the impacts , just the after effects . They came in slowly but it was definitely getting old . I was out of ideas of how to deal with this . So I guess I could listen to whatever mad idea Rachel had come up with . " You know the basics . Every new child is injected with this serum at birth and after 23 you can become connected . One day you wake up physically feeling whatever your intended soulmate feels . They stub a toe and a few minutes later you toe is killing you . First it is just physical but it evolves to an emotional connection after a while , " She was sitting with her back against my arm chair . " Now you can go to City Hall to have them help you find your soulmate if you want . You register , they use their database and some magic I don 't understand , to find whoever it is . You find them , you both seal the connection and then you run off and live happily ever after , " she was fanning out the papers in her hands . " Now what they never told us in school was two things . Number one , is you can actually disconnect from someone if you so desire . If you want to be alone or hate people or whatever you can disconnect and then you are free . But you can 't ever be connected again , " she looked up at me . " Knew that . I was told that a while ago , don 't remember by who . But yeah I knew all that , " She looked a bit shocked but nodded and continued on . " No , it actually doesn 't , " I didn 't look down at her paper , which I was sure had a plan to fight me with . " We do not know the source of this . We could bring down cops and state officials onto someone who just can 't walk over a flat surface . Now is that fair ? " " Someone is abusing your connection ! " Rachel snapped . " How can you not care ? Even if you take out the connection part , do you not care about someone getting hurt ! ? " " A . Do not try to label me some cold hearted bitch you doesn 't care . You know better then that . B . We don 't know anything . Maybe they are a cage fighter and lose a lot ? Or maybe they are a thrill seeker and fall down hills all the time ? We do not know anything for sure , " I told her . She took a deep breath trying to calm herself . " Fine , " she pointed down at the papers . " Here are all the papers you need to have them find the person . Fill them out and find them . See for yourself what is going on . I knew you wouldn 't do this the easy way . So here , " she stood up . " I just hope you aren 't too late and I hope it doesn 't end up kill you in the process . " She turned and headed out , the door slamming behind her . I winced at the pain in my head . She pulled back her eyes swimming with tears , fear evident on her face . Worried that even something this simple was hurting me . " You have a headache ? " she asked gently . She walked to the counter and got me two aspirin and filled a glass of water . I took the pills with a grateful smile and swallowed them down . Once I was positive the car was long gone I got my own keys . I needed to get City Hall . I needed to break this connection . I knew what the decision meant . I knew that this was the end of my possible soulmate , the end of the possibility of having a perfect life handed to me on a platter . I didn 't have the time or energy to think about all I was giving up by breaking this connection . Did I believe in this concept ? I didn 't know and I didn 't have the luxury to research or think it through . Susan needed me and right now that was all that mattered . City Hall was packed today . I glanced down at my watch , it was one . Of course it was packed , it was lunch hour . Everyone here had a finite amount of time to iron out whatever drama they were dealing with and get back to the office in time to have a bite or two of their sandwich . This was going to be even more of a headache then I previously thought . I almost left and headed back to my apartment but I remembered the anger on Rachel 's face and her accusation . It only took me about ten minutes after Rachel left to realize how much of a point she had . Yeah , whoever was my supposed soulmate was not someone I knew personally and I didn 't know what his problem was but I did know that whatever was happening was seriously starting to hurt me . After she left I got up , gathered together the papers and filled them out . They were pretty basic and were not asking me for too many details but as I was filling them out I hit my side on the counter and nearly broke down into tears . I didn 't do pain well and I needed to end this horrible ordeal and quickly . So here I was off to see if I could find this person and figure out what was going on . I could sever the connection fully and be completely done with this forever but there was this little voice that was whispering to me . It wanted to know what was going on . So more out of curiosity than anything else I was here . My goal was to turn the papers in , get the address and name and go find this person . I would figure out if they were just some clumsy idiot who couldn 't walk straight or if they actually needed some type of help . What I would end up doing from there I have no idea . I would pass that threshold when I got to it , right now I needed to find the main office first . I was only a few inches shorter then the man but the way he held himself made him seem feet not inches taller then me . I stopped leaning back on the wall and stood up straighter . He didn 't look at me or say a word . His eyes stayed trained on the numbers as the floors slid by . We got to the fifteenth floor , the doors opened and he exited first . I followed . We both walked straight down the hall . He was quick , knew where he was going . He turned right at the last door on the end , he reached out and grabbed the door knob ; as he did his arm swung out and his sleeve slid up just a few inches . I saw for half a second a bruise ring on his wrist . He went into the room . I stopped and pulled out my own right sleeve and looked down at the bruise there . I shook my head , it was nothing . I pushed it from my mind and headed into the office . I didn 't say anything . Just sat and crossed my legs . I made sure to act like I had no idea who he was . I watched the people around me . Two individuals stood at the counter , having a muffled conversation . While others were sitting bent over clipboards filling out some sheets , that were probably similar to the ones clutched in my hands . Some people looked excited . They were here to get that coveted name and address . Maybe within the next hour they would be face to face with their soulmate . A soulmate supposedly found by some highly scientific process that one could even begin to explain to me . They would meet and would assume they were in love . From that very moment on they would start forcing all their actions to work with this person because they were their soulmate , so of course whatever they were doing was right . That annoying laugh you could barely tolerate was suddenly cute because they were the " one . " Need to change your style to make them happy ? Sure that was fine because they are the love of your life so it was right . All those things you normally would run from screaming were suddenly bearable and perfect because they had to be . It was all ridiculous . Others looked more sane . They were here to disconnect and get control back for themselves . They would choose who they loved , not some process that no one actually understood . Like me they didn 't automatically assume that this soulmate was their chosen one and that they would be perfectly happy after they met . They decided to think with their own brains and not their hearts . Smart people . I looked over and caught his eyes , they were wide in shock and fear . He quickly turned away trying to pretend nothing happened . He folded his arms across his chest causing the side of his shirt to rise a few inches . I saw the finger shaped bruise on his hip . " Oh no , " I said to myself . He was my man and he wasn 't getting away from me that easily . I followed behind him , keeping to his heels until he was out of the office . Once we were both clear of the door I grabbed his wrist and felt an ache go up my arm . " Not what I was looking for but name is Samantha . Now what is going on with you ? " I asked . I was not in the mood to have a long conversation full of introductions and small talk . " Nothing . I 'm sorry you are affected but it 's personal , " he said . " Let me go back in and break the connection and it will all stop . " He turned to walk around me . " Not until I get an answer . What is with the new coloring ? " I asked . I pulled back my sleeves to show my black and blue arms . " I look like a modern art paining . Explain . " " Are you being abused ? " I asked plainly . This man wasn 't going to spill his secrets to me at the moment . The only way I was going to get any type of answer was if I somehow guessed it . " It is not that simple . She is sick . She needs me . I just have to deal , " is all he said . " Can I go in now ? Please ? " I let him walk in the door . They were on number 35 . I was next . I didn 't retake my seat . I just stood on the wall , anxiously waiting for the woman ahead of me to finish . Samantha didn 't follow me inside . I don 't know what to make of her . She was pretty but blunt . She didn 't have stars in her eye unlike so many did when they were connected . She seemed closer to Earth . If I didn 't have Susan would we get along ? Could she possibly be the one ? I hit my head back against the wall . None of that mattered anymore . Maybe in another timeline we would be connected and fall into each others arms . We would be perfect but that wasn 't here and now . Now I had to break this so my decision stopped hurting her . " Would you like to speak to someone first ? Would you like a pamphlet on the process ? How long have you been connected ? Have you considered every single possibility ? " she asked one question after another . I was prepared for this . They wanted to make sure you completely understood what you were doing . " Sure , " she held out a clipboard with two sheets on it . " Fill out both and bring them back here . " she sounded as if she was helping me bury someone . " Well , in my experience things that are complicated are easier to deal with , with two people . Alone it can look like a mountain to tackle but with a friend maybe it is only a hill . " she said . She put her hand on my paper and I had to stop and listen to her . " This concept is all bullshit , I know that . I don 't know you and I don 't understand your problem but I know the effects of it ; at least physically . I can only imagine the emotional trauma . You can 't do this alone . Now I am not saying I want to end up being carted off into the sunset with you but you are going to need some help , a friend . So put down the pen and come get a cup of coffee with me . You can explain some of it and I can make my decision from there . If it is too much for me to even think about I will walk away and you can finish filling these out . But maybe , just maybe I can help you in some fashion . Maybe I can be a friend , " she save me a small grin . I should have politely told her no and finished my task . This was my problem and pulling in a complete stranger was cruel and potentially dangerous . Then again I was so tired . This process was starting to get exhausting . It might be nice to have a shoulder to lean on and an ear to talk to . " One cup , " I told her . I put the board and pen on the chair . She led the way out the door . As I left I could have sworn I saw a smile thrown my way by the receptionist . A / N : Todays prompt was free write for at least 400 words and the twist was to write something you think is too silly or have been hesitant to write about . I choose to do actually just type up the story without handwriting it first , something I never do and I kinda see why . Stuff comes out too disjointed I think . I leaned up against the window and looked at the dark shelves . Jackson said the book was on the back shelf near the top . He said , that it was hidden in a secret compartment that you had to pull out the right combination of other books to find . But it was there . I jiggled the handle of the door . Of course it was locked . It was midnight , no book store was open at midnight . I looked around me , trying to see if anyone was watching . The streets were empty . Then again if I was seen breaking in , no one would question me . The bad guys were the good guys here . They would give me respect , think I might be able to pull some strings and get them out of trouble . I didn 't want that . I didn 't want to be a villain . So I made sure no one saw as I broke the little glass window above the knob . I carefully slid my hand inside , avoiding the shards of glass and twisted the lock . Once it was open , I pulled out my hand and opened the door . I slinked inside and ducked down . Praying no one saw me . Once I was sure that I was safe I straightend up and ran into the shelves space . I carefully picked my way through the rows , making sure not to knock anything over or trip on the carpet . Once I was in the very back of the store , I looked around until I found the shelf that Jackson had mentioned . Right at the back in the corner . I went over and began to pull the books off the shelf in the order he told me , I was just about to pull the last one when I felt a small hand on my back . I dropped the books and froze . Who was it ? Was it the owner ? Were they going to start questioning me now ? Were they going to try to make me a friend of theirs to be used later ? I didn 't say anything , I just waited anxiously for the person who was touching me to speak . " I see we have found our way here finally , " the voice was soft and slow . It was female and I felt like something was inching up and down my spine . I knew what I was going to see when I turned around . I spun and there before me stood HER . She was dressed in a long black dress , with a dark green outline . Her black hair laid over her back , straight and out of the way . She had on red lipstick and a cruel smile that I could just make out through the shadows . She gestured to a chair beside me . I sat down , knowing that if I didn 't do it voluntarily she was going to make me do it anyway . " So what took you so long ? " she asked . She was trying to sound sweet and kind but the words just weren 't work . There was too much poison in her veins for any kindness to be able to live . " I have been at this for many years my dear boy . And you are the first to come looking for the book . Many speak of it , many say they have read it and many make up descriptions and stories to prove that they have read it But you are the first to actually come looking for it . Why ? She was sitting in her own chair . Arms crossed , studying me . " Because they all say that in it the hero wins . I have to see if it is true , " I told her . I knew lying was pointless she would see right through each and every word . " It matters to me . The heroes don 't win anymore . Every story end with the ' villian ' wining , the one who causes all the pain and hurt . It sucks and I am tired of that world . I wanted to see if another world was possible , " I felt my voice getting smaller and smaller . I felt like a toddler , waiting for my parents to tell me to stop being silly and grow up . She smiled , a smile that crinkled her eyes and made me squirm . It was one of pride . " Good . " she stood . " Finally we have found you . " " Because the stories are dying . They need to be saved . They can 't continue to live as they are . The villains can not always win while also the heroes can not alway lose . These stories , " she waved at the shelves . " Are old and worn out . It is the same tale over and over again . I am dying because of them . I need you to set things right again , " She moved to the shadows . I waited , still trying to figure out what exactly was going on . Set things right ? What things ? Her world that she ruled ? Why ? Or was it more she needed me to save her . Should I do that ? Should I run ? Or will she just catch me . " Write the new stories . Make this world live again . Show the people that villains can be good and evil , same goes for heroes . Make the sidekicks rule the world while the main character fade into the background . Make a story that no one can understand , but is still intriquing . Write life for me , " she came over and kissed my head . " Thank you for my dear for being the only one to come looking for a new ending . " A / N : Todays prompt was to take the scenario of Mrs . Pauley and old woman who has lost her husband and her six sons are no longer living at home . She has fallen on hard times and people come to evict her . The idea is to tell the story from the 12 year old child across the streets perspective . The twist was to write in first person perspective It was a rare day . I was allowed outside today . I 'm not allowed out normally . My parents say it is too dangerous outside , people disappear too often . Usually I just stay inside and read my books playing inside the story world on my virtual reality device . I like it in there , so many different places to go to . But sometimes it is a safe day and today is one of those days . There is no danger of me being taken my mom says . I don 't know why today is any different then yesterday or the day before but my parents say it is okay and they are my parents so they know what they are talking about . The sun is warm on my face . I giggle as the wind lifts my hair and throws it in my face . I pull the strands away only to have them come crawling back . I feel like I am playing with a wind spirit , like in my fantasy stories . I imagine a little sprite playing a trick on me . The birds sing from the trees . It is nice to hear them , to hear actual chirping instead of the fake tracks that play in my games and sometimes in our house . We can watch the TV and hear the bird sounds and feel the " wind , " but it isn 't real . I like being out here where the world is real . I sit down on the stone steps and prop my head on my hand . I don 't know what to do now that I was outside . I wasn 't allowed to go for a walk by myself . I was never allowed to do that even before people started disappearing . A few people walk pass our house on the sidewalk but they don 't pay any attention to me . Today is a safe day so no one really looks at anyone else . I lifted my head and scratched at a scar on the back of my hand . It was just a line that I had had since I was a baby . My parents said all kids nowadays had them . I wished I had friends like I used to have . But no one had friends anymore . At least not like in the stories that I read . I liked those stories that have two best friends taking on the evil world around them . They would laugh and tease each other but then jump in front of fireballs and off bridges to save each other . I wanted that . But it wasn 't safe to get close to anyone you weren 't related to anymore my parents told me . You didn 't know who was working for " them , " and if you talked to the wrong person you could end up gone . My excitement for being let outside had evaporated . I didn 't know what to do and now I felt more trapped then before . I was sitting here but I couldn 't really do anything . Everything beyond my doorstep was dangerous , and I didn 't know why ! I was on feet and about to go back inside when something across the street caught my eye . Three men were walking up Mrs . Pauley 's driveway . I liked the old woman . She would wave at me sometimes from her window . She always looked sad though . My dad said it was because she lost her husband , I don 't know if he was taken or just died , and that her six sons were all on their own now and she had no one left . I never talked to her , because my parents wouldn 't let me but I alway assumed she would be really nice . Maybe talk like the grandma 's from TV , all sweet and always offering you a cookie . They knocked on her door . I sat back down , scratching at the scar on the back of my hand . They waited but the door never opened . They knocked again , louder this time . She still didn 't answer . Maybe she wasn 't home . It was a safe day , maybe she went out for groceries or a walk down the street . Couldn 't they just come back later ? I guess not , because now they were yelling while they knocked on the door . The door opened and old Mrs . Pauley stepped out of the door . Her hair was sticking up in all different directions and she wore a pink night dress . She was really shaky looking as she closed the door , stumbling as she walked forward . The men didn 't help her at all . " NO ! " I screamed as I saw them reach out to take her . I threw my hand over my mouth . That was a very bad idea . They all looked over at me , the men giving me a glare like my mom did when I said a bad word . Uh oh , would they take me now ? Mrs . Pauley waved at me , the same way my teacher had waved at me when I was taken out of school that last day . I felt a hard tug on my shoulder . I stood up . I turned to find my dad watching across the street . He waved at the men as he steered me inside and shut the door . I couldn 't see where they were taking Mrs . Pauley . " Where is she going ? " I asked . I tried to go to the window on the side of the door but my Dad held me tightly not letting me move . " Away . It is her turn . It is why today is a safe day . They knew it was her time . We can 't be taken today . Their quote has been filled , " I didn 't understand most of what he said but I nodded as if I did . " Go up to your room , " he told me . He didn 't sound angry , more like he did when he was watching a sports game and I asked a question . He was only half paying attention to me . " Okay , " I said . As I walked upstairs I rubbed my scar over and over again . Why was it her turn ? I didn 't understand . I went to my window to look down at the street . A black car was pulling away . No one followed or tried to stop them . I swiped at the tear on my cheek . It wasn 't fair . A / N : Day 17 prompt was to write about a fear or something you are scared of . The twist was to write in a different style then what you are used to . I tried to write in a stream of consciousness type way as well as keeping it personal . I parked the car and glanced at the clock on my dashboard . There was fifteen minutes left until the meeting was supposed to begin . I stared at the little white glowing numbers trying to get my brain to stop racing . What would they think when I walked in that door ? If I went in too early then I would have to interact with someone , maybe ? Or I could end up sitting alone , waiting desperately for the meeting to start so I could stop feeling like a three - eyed alien . I bet I am the youngest one there tonight . They are all going to wonder what I am doing there . I am too young to know anything about this . Why is she even here ? Does she even know what to do ? What has she written that is worthwhile ? She isn 't old enough to have anything worthwhile . She has nothing published , why even bother listening to her ? " Dammit , that is enough , " I snapped at myself . I had to stop this incessant sound track that was trying to take over my mind . That damn little voice is always trying to make itself the only thing I hear . I need to stop it in its tracks or else I will never get out of this seat . If I was going to go through with this and meet my goal tonight , I had to not let my habits take over . I needed to completely ease my mind and go in there and see what happens . It was eight minutes to seven . It was time to leave my car . I opened the door , stopping the song mid sentence . I gathered myself together . I had to stop trying to think of what could happen in this meeting . Right now even trying to think positively was dangerous , my mind would run away from me and that was not acceptable . I just need to go in there with a blank slate . I knew that I was also battling the side of me that wanted to get into my car and turn around and go home . I could easily open that door back up and drive until I was in my parking lot . Go up to my apartment , curl up on my couch with my purring cat and just be safe . Home was safe , here was potentially dangerous . But here was also an opportunity I could not pass up . I had to show myself and what I could do other people . I can 't be successful hiding behind a closed door , it just wasn 't possible . I walked up the street , continuously telling myself to remain calm and stop obsessing . I need to put a smile on my face and straighten my back . I have to be open to what is going to happen next ; not on guard . I need try to show every who I am . Not show them that scared child that hides in the corner that keeps trying to come out . Yes , I am quiet but I do have a voice and when I use it , it echoes loud and proud . The meeting starts quickly . I barely have time to take in everyone that surrounds me . I am asked to read first . I read with my eyes never leaving the small black letters before me . All my energy is concentrated on not stumbling over my words and making myself sound like an idiot . I want them to hear the story with the emotion that I intended for it . They need to hear the story without my nervous voice coming through . All my energy goes into reading what I wrote so they can get escape just like I did while writing it . The critiques are few but good . They are not harsh or angry . They are helpful and are given as opinions not commands or demands . I accept them without saying much in return . I don 't know what to say , still afraid that the wrong words may leave my mouth . I don 't want to sound arrogant or upset or too nonchalant . So I don 't say much but a few " thank you 's " and " I understands . " The spotlight leaves me and I feel myself relax . My shoulders are no longer taut and my hand has gone down to only slightly trembling . Now it is time for me to listen and add my voice in when necessary . But as is my habit my voice remains inside me . Look we are talking about blogging , I should open my mouth . I should tell them what I know , how I blog and why I like where I post my pieces . The woman wants the advice , why can 't I give it ? Why can 't I just tell them what I know ? Why is my opinion not worth as much ? At least in my eyes . Because they may ask too many questions and I may run out of answers . Maybe they will think I am being too haughty , or maybe I 'll say something that they will all stare at me for . Am I even blogging the right way ? " Enough ! " I silently chide myself . I can 't do that . I can 't let the obsessing over what may happen keep me from finding out what will happen . I have always hid away in this tiny comfort zone , always keeping myself scrunched up in here . This spot is safe and warm and nothing can hurt me here . But also nothing can help me here either . There is nothing left inside this little circle of mine , but old words and dried up thoughts and dreams . It isn 't pleasant in here . But I live here . I live in this zone because I am terrified . Terrified that when I venture out , putting my toe over the line , that the world will come crashing down on me . Like everyone is a dragon waiting for me to cross that boundary and they will swoop down and consume me . They will throw negative thought after negative thought at me . Or I will make a bad impression and they will never forget it . Or I won 't make an impression and I will cease to exist to them . I will remain invisible as always . That is what is outside that comfort zone , at least in my head . I tried for years to deal on my own . I would jump over the line and then slink back in because it was all too much . My imagination would take off creating all these horrendous scenarios and I would just curl up into a ball and refuse to move . If I didn 't move then those scenarios were dead in the water . It wasn 't working . So I made a decision , I needed to find someone to help me . My family is great but they don 't understand . I needed someone who could try to give me tips and advice and ways to work with the fear . I found a therapist to talk to and quickly realized that I knew what I was doing was absurd . No , people weren 't going to attack me as soon as I opened my mouth . And if they did , I didn 't need them . Yes , this introduction or that interaction might go wrong but I can walk away . I can walk away and my life is not over . The chances of that one person having a hugely detrimental effect on my life from this point onwards because of one dumb thing I said is very very small . I know all this , I know I am being too hard on myself . I know I am obsessing and I need to stop . Now I am learning how to do just that . This was a big step for me . Not only did I actually walk into this meeting but I shared apart of myself with them . Did they get the best impression of me ? No , they saw the quiet woman who is still living mostly in shadows but the important thing is they saw me . I let them see me and next time I will let them see a bit more . I will never be the one who can go around a room and chat with everyone that is there . I will never be the one to jump at the chance to talk to a stranger . But I am slowly learning to not fear those unknowns . Yes , it can go bad and Yes , it can go well . But I will never know until I actually try . Next time I will offer my opinion on a subject , even just a few words . It will be one more step forward . And for now on , forward is the only direction I am going to bother trying to go in A / N : Day 16 ( I did day 15 but again it wasn 't publishable ) prompt was the write about a place of lost and found , and the twist was the complete the 3 part series . The idea here was to reflect on the concept of lost and found and see where it takes you . ( the other two parts in this are Indestructible , and Indestructible team ) . I wanted to take this last part and reflect from the daughters POV . I threw my bag onto the ground beside the closet door . I collapsed onto my butt onto the ground and yanked off my work shoes , letting my feet breathe . My cat came over and curled up into my lap , purring contently . I scratched him behind his ears and closed my eyes , only intending to rest them . I had no intention of drifting off to sleep , but the day had been a long one . Full of complaints and running in circles . My body needed a few minutes to rejuvenate itself , so I drifted off . I found myself with my feet dangling from a cloud watching the world below me . I liked it up here , it was comforting . I felt safe up here . Up here I could watch events unfold without being apart of them , without having to make the tough decisions and suffer the consequences . Up here what happened down on the ground couldn 't hurt me , at least not at the moment . I couldn 't lose anyone or anything up here . I felt the cloud sink down a few inches as someone joined me . I grinned over at the tall lanky man who had sat down beside me . He just smiled back at me , watching the cars zoom through the streets and the people run to make appointments . We watched life move forward for a few moments . I sighed . I knew he was right . I wasn 't done following my life path . There was still miles upon miles of unexplored territory waiting for me to discover . Dark holes , corners and dirt paths that had never seen a living soul . They were all waiting for me to come crashing through them , smile on my face as I opened their ways up to the world . " Kinda sucks down there , " I told him , letting my carefree smile sink away . " I mean my life start out pretty shitty and ever since then every time I take a leap forward , life punches me back until I 'm only inches away from where I started . I 'm tired of being on the end of that fist , " I told him . " I know and I 'm so sorry for that . But unfortunately this was the hand you were dealt . Look at your mother , she lost everything yet found a way to push herself up from her knees and knock that fist away from her . She raised her own hands and began to fight back . She matched the world blow for blow . Now it is your turn , " He pointed at the ground . " Each person down there will most likely lose what they wanted most . They will then find something new , the choice becomes about what you do with that find . Do you push it aside because it isn 't what you initially wanted ? Or do you pick it up , look at it from all angles and see the beauty that stands before you ? " I could feel his eyes staring into the side of my face . " What if what I find requires too much work ? What I lost was whole and complete and now I have only pieces surrounding me . What do I do with them ? " I asked him , my voice almost a whisper . For some reason I felt ashamed admitting this out loud . " Then you begin to put the puzzle together . You could just leave the pieces in a tangled mess and mourn what you have lost but what do you end up getting from that ? Nothing , but a faint and painful memory . Take those pieces and start building the outline . Trust me when I say the picture you are creating is going to be stunning , " he shoulder bumped me , making me laugh . " Yep , it will be . But use your mother as your example . Lean on the shoulders you need to lean on . Rage and break things when necessary . Break down into life crushing sobs when you feel like there is no way out of where you are at the moment . But when you get to the end , and you will reach that point eventually , stand up proud of what you 've done . One of your first lessons in life was how to find inner strength to keep yourself moving . It lives like a fire inside of you , always burning . Sometimes it is only an ember but it is always alive . Use it and take on that world down there , " He leaned forward and kissed my forehead . " And as always I 'll be right beside you . " " Thanks , " I said . He stood up and waved good bye as the cloud began to sink closer and closer to the Earth . A moment later my eyes opened and I was on the floor of my apartment , my cat curled into my side . I sat up and stretched out the knots in my shoulders and back . Just like my mother I had a fight on my hands , one that was going to try to break me with everything that it had . But she was able to rise above her loss and in turn found an indestructible strength inside of her . A strength she passed onto to her family . It was an essence that we all had that could never be dampened . Now it was my turn to find my own indestructible strength and take on this rough yet beautiful world . Julius stood , head craned over his shoulder staring at his back . The slits for his wings were red and inflamed , painful to any type of touch . Even a small breeze made him wince and bite his lip . He hunched his shoulders forward and then straightened out his back trying to force the tiny shreds of feathers to poke out more . They remained immobile , just barely sticking out torturing him . It had been two day since the incident with Scarlett . Two days since he had taken off his bright white T - shirt and traded it for a grey one that had hung in the very back of his closet . He had accepted his fate , knowing that he was doomed as soon as the words had refused to pass his lips . As she had wrapped her cold arms around his stomach and laid her head on his back , he knew he had nowhere to turn . He had lost everything in order to save her . After fighting his battle with every ounce of energy his possessed he had stumbled and fell losing everything in the process . Scarlett had looked into his eyes and had wiped his mind of everything but her and only her . Those so important words that he had promised himself he would never ever forget had completely disappeared in his moment of need . For the first day of his transformation he had been incapacitated not only from the pain that was radiating up and down the muscles in his back but from the pain of his defeat as well . What had she done to him ? How had she taken control of his mind like that , making him lose everything he had fought so hard for ? Scarlett was a tricky woman to care about . She had come to him when he had needed her the most , being his companion in his hour of need . But over time the world became more about her and only her . Every time he tried to walk away she had whispered a plea or looked at him with those lost eyes and he had walked right back into her arms . The questions and reminiscing stopped running through his head quickly though once the pain of the emerging feathers took complete control of his mind . For an entire day he had laid in a collapsed heap as the pricks and stings came and went . They would stall and he would move pushing on one of the tips and wave after wave of agony would ripple up and down his back . He lost the ability to see as well as the ability to interact with the world around him ; let alone ponder how he had ended up in this place . Today he woke up , the pain still there but bearable . Scarlett was nowhere to be seen . She had left him . She had walked away when he had needed her the most , as she was known to do . His back still ached this morning , but the pain was numbing now . Maybe the initial shock was over or he was just getting used to the stings . Either way he had been terrified to turn his back and look in the mirror but he knew he had no choice . He had to see what was now apart of him . He had made it until the sun started set until he had given into curiosity . He had to see the beginning of the wings . The beginning of his life shifting from his complete control to a life where he barely played apart . He had to see the evidence that life was no longer his own . He now stood in front of the mirror confused , as well as slightly scared . He went to touch the pieces of feathers he could see when a knock sounded at the door . He stopped , completely still . Who was that ? Scarlett ? She wouldn 't knock . He was not in the mood for visitors at the moment , or really ever again if he was being honest with himself . The second knock was harder and more persistent . Again he stood completely still , the angry red marks on his back shining brightly in the dim room . He heard the door knob rattle but no one entered the house . Why not ? He checked his watch , it read 8 : 45pm . They still had fifteen minutes to come inside . But after a few seconds he realized no one was coming inside . Maybe they got bored , or were too polite or too scared or just crazy . He really didn 't care . As long as he didn 't have to deal with them right now . He returned his attention to his ruined back . He just stared at it , at a loss for words . Why were they so small ? Where were the full feathers , and the appendages to hold them ? Why was there no evidence that they were going to get any bigger ? It just looked like someone had ripped open his back and had gotten debris inside the cuts . As if he could pour water down his back and wash out the pieces . He knew that wasn 't true though . After two days he should have something beginning to take shape , maybe even full wings . What was wrong ? He heard a door close and soft footsteps make their way into the living room . Scarlett was home , or else the visitor from earlier had come back through the back door . Honestly he didn 't think he wanted either case to be true . " What is wrong with me ? " he asked , spinning to face her . He didn 't have the energy for pleasantries . He needed an answer . Why he thought she would have them he had no idea ? But there was no one else to ask , to bark questions at or rage at . This was all her fault after all . " I don 't have any real feathers . It is like they are stuck , or something , " he turned his back to her so she could see properly how much of a mess it was . He couldn 't watch her face distort in horror , but he had hoped to hear her whimper or scream at the sight . Maybe she would even run from the house and leave him alone . He hoped she would maybe even whimper in pity , knowing that she had done this to him . " Oh honey , " she cooed , like she was seeing a small inconsequential scratch . He felt her hovering near his back , a cold nail touching the very top of one of the openings . The rational part of him knew he should back away and run from her . He should put his shirt back on and get the hell out of the house , find someone who could give him answers , who wouldn 't betray him sooner or later . " What do I do ? " he asked her . Again why was he asking her , like she had any real information ? Yes , she ran around the cities getting into trouble and hanging with the wrong people but he doubted she knew the secrets of the Winged One world . If she did and had never told him , he didn 't think he could ever look at her again . This wasn 't her fight . Yes , she had caused this to happen to him but she wasn 't part of this now . She shouldn 't be forced to suffer with him . He had to find answers , in the hopes he could help himself so in turn he could help her when her own transformation began . " I have to find Jack , " he said turning around and breaking their contact . He pulled his T - shirt back over his head , wincing slightly at the tug at his skin . He made his way towards the door . Scarlett reached out and grabbed the tips of his fingers . " Don 't , " she pleaded . He looked her in the eyes , saw the tears glistening there . He felt his heart ache . She was just as lost as he was , but it was even worse for her . She had been running around her whole life looking for a safe place to live out her life . Now she stood in his house , watching him breaking down and knowing that soon it would happen to her as well . He had saved her only to destroy her . " It is going to be alright , " he pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her back . He placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head . He knew soon she would begin suffering as well . He didn 't want her to hurt , but right now she was whole . Right now he was the one falling apart and he needed to find his own answers in order of having a hope of helping her at all . A part of him wanted to stay here and protect her , to not let the world destroy her like it was destroying him . Another part of him wanted to shake and scream at her , begging her to tell him how she had made him forget what he promised himself he would never forget . Another part of him just wanted to collapse into tears and beg for this all to stop . He felt his head spinning as the emotions swirled around and around . He didn 't know what he was going to feel next , let alone what he was going to do . " I gotta go , " he pushed her away from him , making her stumble back on her heels . Jack would have answer for him . At least that is what he silently prayed to himself as he slammed the door . Because if Jack didn 't have anything ; Julius wasn 't sure what he would end up doing to himself and let alone Scarlett . A / N : Today 's prompt was to open the page of the nearest book to page 29 and use the first word to jump out at you as inspiration . I used the book " To Say Nothing of the Dog , " by Connie Willis and the word was crypt . The twist was to write in letter form . I sit here in the corner of this almost pitch black hole in the ground . My only light is from my phone . There are no windows , only one single door at the top of a handful of stairs that lets in sunlight and life . I closed the door after I walked in today , secluding myself from the living and breathing world . I want to spend the afternoon in your home , just you all and me . In this crypt there are a number of you , departed souls . All of you have your stories , most of which I will never know . Some of you I will only know how your lives began or how they ended . Some of you I will make up your stories based off my own wild imagination , using only your name and birth and death dates . Maybe you at the very top corner were a shoe salesman but in my head you have the story of a great war hero . You saved countless number of lives and came home with more medals then you ever could find a place for . Are you smiling at my ramblings ? Amused by my take on your life ? Are you shaking your head in disappointment as I rattle off the life you wished you had but were too scared to go after ? Or are you angry that I under cut your honest and hardworking life ? A life that made you proud and let your family live in comfort . I didn 't plan on coming in here today . I was just on my way home from work when I saw this place . There is just a small little stone building that holds the door , then a few steps and the entrance to this place . There was nothing here that would scream at you to come exploring . I knew what was behind the door , ashes , bones and memories . I came inside because I need something . I don 't know what I need though . Maybe I 'm looking at the wrong place , searching in the wrong dark corners . Something is missing from me . Can you give it back to me ? Are any of you actually listening ? Am I just talking to the dust and the wind ? Do you care ? Can you see me ? See my crumpled form , hunched in this corner , a pen in my hand skating across the surface of this paper ? Can you see what I am missing ? Is it obvious to your eyes that are no longer crowded by the problems of this world ? Do I have a hole in me ? Or would helping me be cheating ? Can you cheat at life ? I 'm not one for taking the easy path in life . I was taught that hard work and risks yield the most precious results , though I haven 't actually seen those results yet . Am I whining too much for you ? Do you want me to just shut up and let you return to your slumber ? Do you get this a lot ? Should I just crumple up this piece of paper , set a match to it and watch it become part of the Earth like you ? Should I ? Or should I stay put and wait you out ? Let you make your final decision , let you see that I really am at my last option here . Are you just waiting for me to fall silent for a minute so you can jump in and rescue me ? I guess I can 't wait though , my pen is just about out of ink . I guess I 'll leave this here and return in a few days time . I will probably find this paper long gone , trampled by visitors footprints ; covered in so much dust and dirt that I couldn 't even begin to guess the words that I had once written on it . I will make one last plea . If you can hear me , if any of you can hear me , I would appreciate the help . All I need is one word . I just want to know someone is listening . We are here . We are always here . We can hear you and we are listening . We only ask one thing . We will listen to your story if you are willing to listen to ours in exchange . We all have stories that need to be told as well , stories that some have never heard before . Open your ears to our hurt , pain , joy and triumphs and we will open our ears to yours . A / N : Todays prompt was to write about something that was found . The twist was to make it the second part of the three part series . So part one of this is from Day 4 - Indestructible . Right now she sat at the dining room table , piles upon piles of pictures before her . She was attempting to find the right ones to put out for her daughter 's high school graduation party . There was just so many different ones and she never had organized them . There was a pile with half Halloween and half Christmas . The vacation pictures had school pictures mixed into them . For many it would seem like a daunting and maybe even aggravating task . For her though it was a great way to examine the past . The pile in her hand was from her second wedding . She let a smile take over her face . She laughed at some of the pictures . She stopped at a picture on the altar . There she stood in her wedding dress beside her new husband . Her three year old beautiful flower girl daughter stood at her feet , smiling shyly , half turned into her mothers legs . Her husband held their couple month old son , who was grinning an adorable baby grin . Here stood what she thought she could never truly have , happiness . Smiles and true laughter were not something she thought she was ever going to be able to have again after that terrible night . For her she thought life was always going to involve her faking smiles , always trying too hard to not let them slip into a frown . She thought her laughter would always sound hallow and sad . Since that night eighteen years ago she hadn 't thought that true happiness ever could be hers again . When he had collapsed in that bathroom never to open his eyes or speak to her again she had thought that was it for her . The picture perfect family life with the loving husband and grinning children was torn away from her . She had made the decision to live for her daughter . She knew she had to keep moving forward for the little girl . She had been determined to hold on tight to that child to make sure that she never got hurt again by this world . Eighteen years later and that little girl was graduating high school and heading off to college . She was beautiful , well behaved and smart ( 13 out of 300 + in her school ) . That mother and daughter team was stronger then she could ever have hoped but it wasn 't just the two of them anymore . Now it was a family of five against the world . She had a husband who had walked into her life and had accepted what he had found with open arms . He had held out a hand for the two of them to take , and they had been holding on ever since . She had two sons as well . Two more children that she loved with all her heart , a heart she didn 't think could heal from that punch eighteen years ago . She took a deep breath and wiped a tear from her eye . Just when she had believed that the universe had discarded her she was guided down a new path to a life . She had found a new way to define happiness and family . She would never forget him and the life they had planned before ; a two child family in a tudor style home . She would never forget his tall lanky form and ridiculously huge coke bottle glasses . He would always have a place in her heart and her memories but she had found a way to move on . She gave each of her children a hug hello , though the middle son tried to wiggle out of her grasp . Yes , that night a comet had cracked up the Earth and tragedy had cracked open her heart . But just like that crack in the ground she was healing , it was a slow process that would last her whole life but with these four people beside her she knew she would be okay no matter what the world threw at her . Because together they were an indestructible team . Top Posts & Pages Sigma Force series character analysis - Seichan Every Day - David Levithan - Review ( Spoilers ) Why I write " Someone needs to tell those tales . When the battles are fought and won and lost , when the pirates find their treasures and dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong , someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative . There 's magic in that . It 's in the listener , and for each and every ear it will be different , and it will affect them in ways they can never predict . From the mundane to the profound . You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone 's soul , becomes their blood and self and purpose . That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it , because of your words . That is your role , your gift . " ( Morgenstern , Erin , The Night Circus , pg 505 ) Post was not sent - check your email addresses ! Email check failed , please try again Sorry , your blog cannot share posts by email . % d bloggers like this : |
At least it feels like it . I was up early and had very little pain but now my neck is really hurting . If it weren 't for that , I could say I feel pretty good . I put Icy Hot on it yesterday and it blistered me ! Never has done that before so don 't know why it did it now . My co - worker had to take some lotion and put on it to soothe it . I 'm having lunch today with two of my multiply friends - Lisa and Cheryl . They are both coming into town and wanted to meet up . I 'm looking forward to that . I don 't have a lot of free time during the week so it will be on my lunch hour but that 's fine . We 're doing a lunch in the park across the street from work and the day looks beautiful . So I think it will be nice to just sit and talk a bit . If we had more time we could go down to the river front and walk but maybe they can get down there and enjoy the afternoon before they leave . I have writer 's meeting tonight but it will be a small number . Sarah has to go out of town . Katie has a scheduling issues , Kathy has sick husband and son . So , be just Doug and Cassie and me . LOL , hope they show up . Be really pathetic to meet with myself ! LOLI hope everyone enjoys a day of sun if you get it . I wish I could spend the day in it . Thankfully , Friday I am off and will be able to have a whole day to myself ! I want to do some work in my yard if I can get Mike up early enough to come help . I have to cut the grass and there are some brown spots I want to actually burn off . Not big ones but they are places that had obvious weeds . When I was growing up we used to always burn off the grass in our yard . My grandparents said the ash was a good for the soil and and grass . We always had pretty green grass so it must have been . Later in life I learned that lye is made from wood ash . They also said if you plant a can of lye near a tree it will provide nutrients to the tree . Can 't be too close . . I think it was about several yards from the base . So , burning off the grass isn 't a bad thing . And I won 't burn it all off , just these huge brown spots . I think they showCynthia Maddox Woke with a headache . Had it all day . Took med at 2 . Just beginning to get some relief in the last couple of hours . Did NOT got to the Y but still exhausted . Nite . On my way out the door in five minutes . I have to pick up Mike , my sister , and Becca and Sarah all before 9 : 30 and they live in different parts of the city ! Rain falls but pain this morning . It was terrible yesterday but I think the weather was only a contributing factor . The lack of good sleep on Saturday night was probable sent me over the top . Everything hurt . I could hardly move when I got up and it didn 't get much better . Had to clean the house a bit as writer 's meeting is Wednesday . Moving loosened things up but did not make it feel better . My shoulders felt as if someone took a hammer to them . On top of the pain , my depression was pretty bad . Only takes one flashback to tip the scales when I " m in severe enough pain . I suppose I 've learned the trigger . Now if I can get the gun . . . Anyway , very bad day . I cleaned house and then called the kids and asked them all to go to lunch so I could get out of the house and have company for an hour or two . They all came home with me but I wasn 't much company actually . I felt horrible . I kept Sarah for Dave and Becca to go to the store and take Mike home and she 's good company . Played with her toys while I just sort of lay around . Finally everyone went home and I went to bed . I posted videos that I 'd been wanting to post but had to wait until I could get them from Dave 's computer on Friday night . Then , once I got them I couldn 't post them until Saturday night ! I tried posting them but it took too long . So I waited till last night . They still had problems with them and it frustrated and upset me that I couldn 't fix it . I knew I had to convert them to a different format . Took me two hours last night to figure it out . I 'd post a couple and they didn 't work right . I was in bed when I remembered something and got up to check it . My HP printer program will convert video formats from . mov to . mpg . Worked perfectly and the vids are up . I felt better then . Ok , time to run . Posted by { This was written months ago and I never posted it . Don 't know why but here is is now . } It is important . It matters . It should get careful consideration because the person is stuck with it for a long time . The Bible says God knows the very number of the hairs on our head and that he knew us before we were born . That 's another reason to be cautious in picking a name . When I was naming my son 's we talked about a lot of them and my oldest son 's name was a compromise . I was very foolish in picking his middle name but I still love the name . It was a character in a book I had read and I was still young enough to be influenced by such things . He hates it . A good sign it was the wrong choice . I don 't think he actually likes the name Michael but we did . Maybe he doesn 't like himself much and that 's sad because he 's a great person . Both of David 's names were considered as first names but I tossed it out as a pair and Jerry liked it . I promptly went to sleep and forgot it . We didn 't decide on a name that night and I was seven months pregnant ! Not until the nurse handed the baby to Jerry did I know what David 's name would be . Jerry had liked it so much and had kept it to himself for three months . And we still took another day to decide . But in the end , Jerry named him . In one of my last posts I had a several comments in regards to Sarah 's name . We 've had people comment on it many times in the last four years . People always say " Oh , that 's a beautiful name " or something similar . We always enjoy watching people 's faces when they hear it because for some reason it strikes a chord with them . There is some interesting information about her name . Before Sarah ever got here her parents began thinking about who she would be , what she would be called . Jerry and I tried to keep our thoughts to ourselves unless we were asked . We remembered how people had bombarded us with family names that we " ought " to use . But of course , everyone got asked about names . Jerry and I said our children would have their own names , not a relative 's and not Cynthia Maddox Had to fix the blog background . The other was just too hard to read . I kept trying to get a background that worked but only one , the summer wood theme , did and one gets tired of it . So , I 've gone back to a melon based theme . Works well and easy to read . I 'll be changing the pictures before long . I like changing it up but it takes a lot of time to make some of them work the way I want it to so I 've started changing it less . I am exhausted and I 've been hurting all over for most of the week . It has rained for a couple of days and I believe the weather ( low pressure systems ) has made me worse . I 've been going home and going to bed . Mostly reading and a little writing . After months of planning and character development , Simon put his foot down and I 've started writing his story . . . from the beginning , which I am quite pleased with . . . so far , and it is going fairly well . . . if I don 't get discouraged . I 'd like to do a couple of chapters a week and have the writing group critique them . There are some holes I have to fill but I decided I wasn 't going to get it done if I didn 't do it . I have spent most evenings doing nothing but lying in bed watching old television shows , reading some , and listening to music . I haven 't chatted much with anyone . Not much blogging . Some video blogging but even that has been too much . For two weeks now I 've just been exhausted . The severe depression seems to be under control . I 'm taking the St . John 's Wort morning and night . I am having " moments " now instead of hours of depression and sadness . Still can 't shut off the images but as a writer , that would be a sort of suicide if I couldn 't visualize . The mind is a bit controlling in that area . Thinks what it pleases , like it or not . I 've already has experience with not dreaming and that didn 't work well . Now , I am having dreams again and fairly regularly . Don 't remember them well but that 's fine , too . Dave and Becca brought Sarah over the other night and she was a lot of fun . I took photos of her and will post those . I was going to try and get her tonight but don 't know if that is still on or not . Writers ' Asylum meets on Wednesday evening . I 'm going to be glad of that . I don 't like this three weeks between meetings ! Really difficult to get by without the other inmates and their version of insanity . Sarah and Kathy are off in the wide world somewhere . A missive comes through here and there . Katie is busy , busy , busy . Doug is silent . Cassie has sent her work for critique and it is rather good . I haven 't finished it but . . . well . . . it would appear that she can write . I 'm going to get to work now . I 'm so tired but there are piles growing so I have to get busy . Hope to catch you all later . LinkI watched this on the news this morning and since I use Multiply , Blogger , and Facebook I thought it would be a good idea to share it . Because of this story , I 'm locking down tighter now on several fronts . I do put a lot out there on the blog . . . not usually so much people could find me but ultimately , if you know where to look , and you know my name , you can find me . I don 't like that about Facebook . You have to use your name . And with a name . . . well , I can find you if I know your name . That 's my job . Google Earth will give me directions to your home if I have the address . I can get the address in a lot of places . You are on a thousand lists . So , if you have my name and address , I probably gave it to you and I 'm fine with it but if you don 't , well , it 's going to get harder now . My life is much more uncomfortable since Jerry died and I don 't want to add to the fears and woes . This frightened me . Please read and watch the story . And close up the holes ! As I was writing this , I realized that Jilly and I gave lovely tours to our homes ! It was fun ! But maybe I wasn 't being very bright to suggest it ? Well , we can 't undo it but some things I may now show only to contacts . LOL , course I 'm sure neither of us has tons of stuff that is of great value but it 's our stuff . And it makes you think . So , caution my friends . Turn off the GPS in your phones and cars . Don 't put your every move out there . No times , dates , appointments , addresses , locations . Close your calendar to all but yourself . Remember , if a family member can see it , so can their friends , particularly on FB . It is the one place I think Multiply is a bit ahead . No just anyone can get into your information . Only those you allow . I don 't use Twitter and I 've got FB locked down pretty tight but there was some really good advice in this story . Take care . Posted by Only have minutes to do this so I 'll dash off what I can . I went to the Y last night . Got home around 8 : 30 or 9 and watch a couple t . v . shows . . . while half asleep . I tried to write , do some research on the story I am working on , tried to read email , tried to read . Brain just gave up and left me there confused . After the last show , I decided to turn out the light . I still have to turn on some sort of noise because when the lights go out my personal theater turns on and all the horrible past rushes at me in force . I do not know if I will ever be free of it . I have the problem during waking hours but I try and keep my mind busy with very little down time . Probably why I 'm exhausted most of the time . But the night , I can 't control . So , I fill them with some kind of sound . This week it is classical guitar music and turned very low . It works well . I 've used Spanish , classical piano , and classical orchestra . All seem to work well . I woke this morning when the clock went off but just lay in bed for another ten minutes . I 've had coffee and now I 'm going to dash off because I want to stop at McDonald 's to get breakfast . I don 't have time to fix it here this morning . I have to get some more breakfast food too . I 'm tired of the same old stuff here and sugary foods in the a . m . bother me . Truth is , if I 'd get up another 20 minutes earlier I could fix a good breakfast . I 've done it . Maybe when I start waking up again I will . LOLI 'm hoping for sun today . My back hurts this morning but now sure if I slept wrong or did something at the Y . Could be both . Hope everyone of you has a beautiful sunny day . Send some my way . ( Picking up my bags , I grab the nearest dwarf . " Come along , Dopey . They 'll leave us if we don 't get moving . It 's a long way to the mines and I 'm not up to the walk this morning . HEY ! Grumpy , get the lead out ! " ) Posted by I 'm about to head out for the mines . It is gloomy and raining . . . still . I slept for hours yesterday after church . I woke just in time to get dressed and go back for the evening service . I slept hard . When I woke up it took several minutes to get to the point I could actually function . My brain was just a fog . I must have been really tired . I had taken my meds before I left and they kicked in about the middle of church . It got very warm in the sanctuary and I got sleepy . But still , when I got home last night I was concerned I 'd not be able to get back to sleep because I 'd had that hard nap . No problem . I chatted with Kat a bit and went to bed . For a minute I lay looking at the ceiling and realized the problem was the silence . It never used to bother me much but it drives me insane now . I hear other things , see other things lying in the dark in the silence . I turned on the cd player and after a few minutes I was out . But this morning I 'm still tired . Well , no rest for the weary so it is off to work I go . I have the Y tonight and I have to get some serious writing in . Time Simon got down to business in his real story . He 's talking again and that 's good . Before I went to sleep I heard a bit of it . LOL . Later ! Oh boy , I needed this . My dad sent it in an email . Anyone who 's ever has surgery will really enjoy it . LOL and some of these guys are easy on the eyes ! And my favorite song is . . . . . . Posted by Finally Friday ! The sun is shinning but I 'm stuck beneath the tower and won 't actually see much until noon . I hope it stick around until I get off work . I was randomly cruising and ran across something cool . Watch this video . I don 't know why we can 't have stairs like this everywhere ! Posted by Sunshine ! ? ? Yes , it is ! Amazing . I have a headache . Had an odd one yesterday and today , another that is probably a migraine . My BP was up when I got up , I 'm sure . I 'll take it again before I leave . I have an appt with the doctor this afternoon so I 'll mention this to him . I do not think the meds they give me work really well at times . But when pain is higher , so is the BP so I don 't know if it would make a difference . The dwarfs are calling ! COMING ! Keep your shirts one ! { grabbing bags , jacket and dashing off } Hi ho , Hi hoIt 's off to work we go ( whistles ) Hi ho , Hi ho , Hi ho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted by I 've just read all the comments to several posts . You are all so funny at times . I 've provided humor and that 's comforting . And you made me laugh , particularly Jilly and Cass ! Must put on my list to ship Reese Cups to England . Every civilized nation should have them ! And Cass , I can send a nice hairpiece if you need it . You know , I 've known so many people who had curly hair after chemotherapy ! But all their hair came out . Sounds as if you just had a tonsure thing going on . Several of you mentioned my dream / sleep issues . Actually , I DO have a sleep disorder . Have for about two decades . Treated for it . Disrupted sleep patterns caused by a child who never slept . I got would clench my teeth at night and resulted in TMJ . Had to sleep with a splint for a couple of years . When I had some dental work done a few years ago much of that problem disappeared . I don 't clench much anymore . But NOT dreaming would be a bigger concern in a sleep disorder . If you aren 't dreaming , you are not getting the right kind of sleep . Dreaming is actually good for you as it allows the mind to decompress from stresses . This may often manifest as nightmares . When I do dream I always have vivid dreams . . . in color . Or at least I remember colors when I wake up . I used to dream long elaborate dreams that I tried writing down whenever possible . With the increase in my pain problems , there was a marked decrease in restful sleep and dreaming virtually stopped . Or I didn 't remember them at all . It was more likely the former since I was not getting REM sleep , which is where dreams happen . I used do something at times . . . well , when I dreamed . . . called lucid dreaming . Didn 't know that is what it was called for years . My dad told me about it . You basically know in the dream that you are dreaming and can control the dream . Years ago he told me he likes to skydive and so if he dreams about falling , he changes it to skydiving ! I tired it a few times in a different kind of dream and it worked . It isn 't easy to do . Not sure I could do it again . Been years sinceCynthia Maddox It 's Monday . Again . I suppose I should be grateful for the " again " but it is never a good Monday . I got up ok . Dressed ok . Did my hair ok . And that 's about it . Cried for 15 minutes before I made myself get out of the house . I had nightmares last night . But it is at the point I can 't tell if I 'm sleeping or awake where nightmares are concerned . When I think of the years , literally years , when I could not , did not dream , prayed to dream it is frustrating to now be having vivid dreams . Of course , that means I 'm sleeping in REM , the best sleep . But it isn 't the best if you wake in the middle of the night to see where you are and what 's after you . I say it was a nightmare . I don 't know . It " felt " like one . I was with these people and there was something going on in the country so that we had to stay out of sight . We had to go somewhere and someone got a plane for us . They told us we couldn 't fly above 200 feet to avoid being seen . ( I know , anyone on the ground could see us at that height ) . I don 't know what it means , I just was along for the ride . We landed at this airfield in the middle of nowhere . I remember thinking " that thing is visible from the air and anyone looking for people trying to hide will see it . " Someone said or I thought " We hide it after we land . " { shrug } No idea . Anyway , we got off this plane and I was with some man . I have never seen him before . Remember in dreams you are one place and then you are somewhere else . . . no scenery in between . Now , we were in this town or village , walking behind the buildings , in an alley large enough to drive a car through . The fenced back yards of house were on either side and bushes , hedges and weeds grew up along the fences and edges of the yards . We went into a building from the back and I could hear music and laughter . It was the kitchen and it was filled with these people working . I want to say they were all dressed in red pants and yellow shirts . Things get a bit chaotic here . This man , with me following , stepped into this hallway and we looked around a corner . A Cynthia Maddox I tried to post around noon today but Multiply went down in the process . I had to copy it and save it until it came back up . . . a short while ago . I hate it when they do that unannounced . . . or did they ? So written before noon this morning - - Laundry day for me . I 've been washing clothes for the last few hours , putting away clean laundry , picking up debris that accumulates throughout the week , washing dishes , and cleaning sinks . I cleaned off the top of the dryer . If you 're one of those lucky people who have a nice laundry room . . . goody . Mine is a virtual closet off the kitchen and just big enough to turn around in . The top of the washer and dryer become shelving . And soap , softener , and stain removers end up spilled on top of the dryer . Fortunately , they clean up fairly well . I 've got to get some Contact paper to cover it again . Rust spots are forming . Oh well , it still works . . . for the moment . I 've also been running scans on the laptop . . . it is running kind of sluggish . I loaded something last night and I think that was the culprit . I 've since uninstalled it and sure enough , lots of adware was found during one of my scans . I 'll do other things but at the moment a virus scan is in progress and it is taking forever because it is a deep scan . It took about 4 hours to physically get out of bed . I was awake at 5 : 30 and since the sun wasn 't going to come up I figured no point in getting out of bed . I turned on the laptop . . . that 's when I found it sluggish , and did a video blog that is just the pits so don 't go watch it . My last several blogs have been bad . I 'm considering closing these mental tortures . It just depresses everyone and I really don 't want to do that . People will stop coming if all I do is moan and groan all the time . So closing it is a sensible option . I 'll think about it a few days . It will mean it won 't post to Blogger or Facebook . It is amazing that the phone has not rung but one time this morning . My aunt called . I 'm sure she was worried . We chatted a bit but I don 't think we were good company for one anCynthia Maddox Not an auspicious beginning to the weekend . Gray , gray , gray , wet , wet , wet cotton batting was rolled across the skies last night and settled heavily today . Based on the maps , it won 't be gone until another work week starts . And once it comes out , I 'll see no sun except possibly through a window . By next weekend there will be more rain and more clouds . I 've had a headache for two days . Finally took an Imitrex around the middle of the morning and it cleared up sometime this afternoon . Came home , stopping by the pharmacy to pick up some scripts that were waiting , and promptly went into a depressed state where I sat and cried and talked to no one and the house resonated with no response . At 6 : 30 I remembered to take my medicines and after about an hour I was upright again . A hot shower made me long for a vat of hot water but it was better than nothing . I opened some canned beef stew that wasn 't really any good . I made hot cocoa and toaster strudel and promptly burnt the roof of my mouth . I 'm going to bed I think . No use sitting up . It isn 't going to be a very useful weekend anyway . I 'd like to sleep but even that seems to be something I 'm denied . I 'll feel lucky to get 5 hours . I 've asked myself over and over what anything means . We spend lifetimes accumulating things - house , cars , possessions , families and photographs of it all . And at the end of the day , when it is all gone , it means absolutely nothing to anyone else . I sat on the edge of my bed and looked around at this box I live in . A treasure chest filled with my life . A coffin of sorts , I guess . I noticed some pictures on the wall in front of me . I bought them when Michael was about Sarah 's age or maybe a bit younger . He 's 30 now and she 's 3 1 / 2 . We lived in Fayetteville , N . Carolina . I remembered how much I liked them and still do . The scenes look like old English villages painted on foil . I 've taken such good care of them because I just loved them . They 've traveled thousands of miles safely wrapped to prevent the glass breaking . At one time , they gave me pleasCynthia Maddox Woke up at 4 : 30 . . . no , I did not get up . I was hurting ALL over . I think the front was passing through . I went back to sleep . Woke at 5 : 45 . I got up after I lay there for a few minutes trying to find a place on my body that was not screaming at me . I got up and dressed . Took about an hour for the worst of it to pass off . Now I have general pain . . . pretty much everywhere but I can walk . My aunt read my blog and thought I had a car accident . She called to fuss because I had not called her . I did NOT have an accident . Only a near miss . Some of you have suggested medicine as a factor . I 've been taking the same medications for years . It isn 't medicine . I only started this since Jerry died , not before . My mind isn 't working well a lot of the time . Very hard to concentrate at times . I think something in all of this has just been too much . I don 't know when or even if it will correct itself . Maybe if I could retire to a nice quiet little town and write and sit in the sun all day , I might get better . The day has been total chaos . . . so what else is new ? I have not been able to do the work I need to do because my " other duties " have taken priority . I 'm so tired of this . I get behind and get stressed because of this . I 'm going home and going to bed unless I can sit in the sun for just a little while . That 'd be so nice . . . . . Posted by It isn 't a very good day today . I kept waking up during the night as if something was wrong . Can 't put my finger on it . Woke up very stressed and felt as if something was wrong . I didn 't want to leave the house . A block from work , I ran a red light and nearly got hit . I was sitting AT the red light and just drove off . I have no idea why or what I was thinking . The light sort of just disappeared and I didn 't know anything until a car coming at me blew its horn . Even then I was through the intersection when the horn registered and I looked in my rear view mirror before I realized what I 'd done . I am getting nervous about driving because this has become common place with me . That was never the case before and I don 't know what to do about it . I don 't know why I 'm doing it ! I am just glad I prayed before I left home . Mike is not answering his phone , which isn 't terribly unusual as he never goes to bed until the small hours of the morning but today , I really need him to answer the phone . He had another headache last night and had nothing to take . I think he is taking too much of the headache medicine . I don 't know why he 's having the headache so much . I couldn 't get up and go out for headache medicine and he has no money or he could have gone down to the pharmacy a few blocks from his house . At any rate , my mental state this morning is not good and it worries me that he isn 't answering his phone . Probably needless worry . And I don 't relish climbing the stairs to his apartment . They are very high and my knees are killing me this week . And since he is deaf he may not hear me pounding on the door . He doesn 't hear the phone ringing . I 'm going now . I have been working on this since before work started . I don 't know what else I can do to sort all of this out . Posted by Seems like it anyway . Heavy overcast . Storms moving in . Not much different from a mine where it is dark and gloomy and there is always a threat of something falling on your head . I 'm sitting here at my desk looking at all the stuff I have to shovel . I don 't want to . Went to the Y last night . It was fine . Well , for the most part . Do you know it is very hard to carry on a conversation with someone standing stark naked in front of you ? Really . I 'm getting things out of my locker to go home and a young woman turns around and starts telling me about her workout . ormally , I 'd stand around and chat but she 's standing there without a stitch on . I don 't know her at ALL - never saw her before and I 'm seeing WAY too much of her . She begins by telling me She hasn 't worked out in three years . I 'd say longer . She said she had just spent an hour and 45 minutes working out . I 'm thinking she 'll feel that tomorrow . When I told my friend Carolyn about it , she said " And you 're standing there thinking , ' Are you embarrassed ? Because I sure am ! ' " Oh , and I 'm sorry but some people should be more ashamed of being naked than others . I wanted to say , " Honey , cover that up ! " No way would I appear in front of all those women like that . I take my suit off behind the curtain in the shower , shower and wash my hair , wrap up in my huge towel , get my gear and head for a toilet stall , where I dress . Then I dry my hair and go home . Ok , now that I 've made your hair stand on end , get up and get a brush . I gotta get my shovel . Posted by The sun is blinding today . I know they expect it to be short lived . I will be glad for longs days of sun . I may actually go stand in it for a short time if it is still around after church ! I 'm on my way to church . I have to stop and pick up Mike . Then , I 'm picking up Becca and Sarah . Dave is working this morning . I 'm glad they are going with me . It is always better when they do . I don 't feel so adrift . I know that sounds crazy . I can 't help that . I hate sitting there staring at empty spaces and expecting a tall form to be there . Cruise in 48 days ! That is what it says on top of the Carnival page . I think I 'll get plenty of sun then . I 'm out now . I don 't know when I 'll get back home this afternoon . We usually have lunch and then take a short nap before church . Hope you all have a great day . Posted by Kat 's mother passed away today . She and her daughter drove down to Texas yesterday and was able to spend time with her mom this morning . She said she was lucid and I am glad that she was able to have last week and today with her mother . They were able to talk and laugh together before she died . Keep them in your prayers . It is a hard road to walk and they will need them . At the moment she says she is fine but I have no doubt it gets more difficult as the days pass . Posted by Nice . Sun is already gilding the ground outside the window . I 'm always glad of a sunny day but I do so , with fingers and toes crossed , that tomorrow is even sunnier . I picked up my ring yesterday after I had it repaired . I was so happy to get it back . I have to stop wearing it where it will get damaged . I 've put it back on my right hand but I don 't think it matters . It just has such a high profile that it gets hung on stuff when I 'm working . I really want to wear it though and will have to be very careful what I do . I had a meeting with the counselor at 5 last night . Dan and I basically just chatted . He too , says I 'm funny . { shakes head } I guess I must be . Enough people keep saying it . I don 't imagine I 'll be going back . We both sort of felt it . He told me to come back anytime I thought I needed to and he 'd be glad to see me . I told him that I didn 't think there was anything he could really do for me . He can 't fix this and neither can I . He nodded and said , " Remember I told you 18 months to two years to recover . You only have a year under your belt . " On my way out he said , " I don 't know how your husband kept up with you ! You 're mind just goes so fast I have a hard time keeping up at times . " He said he had to really concentrate at times to keep up with me . I told he had to stay awake . Then , I laughed and told him I didn 't know if I 'd just been insulted or complimented . He told me it was a compliment and he enjoyed talking to me . I gave him a hug and said good - by . I got home around 6 : 30 and got my shower , decided on a sandwich for supper since Carolyn and I had Chinese for lunch when I picked up my ring . The jewelry store was almost right next door to the restaurant . I had a couple of phone calls but I was in bed by 7 : 30 and read until close to 9 when I could no longer stay awake . Lights out . Slept like a rock , but I had a rough night . I had a nightmare and woke up around 11 : 30 and made a potty trip . . . I think . . . . { shakes head } not sure about the potty . Woke up again around 3 a . m . and again at 6 : 30 but I didn 't get upCynthia Maddox We had Writers ' Asylum meeting tonight . It is always such fun to have them over . And we hammered out a slogan . . courtesy of the Snowgoon , aka Goon . ( Actually he said it and the inmates all howled approval . ) Here is the new slogan for the Writers ' Asylum Writing Group : " You don 't have to be crazy , you just have to be committed . " Kathy is working on the logo . Looks really cool so far . We critiqued Katie tonight , offering her lots of feedback and suggestions that I think will really help her in her writing . She has a good start to a story . One suggestion we really think is a good idea for anyone wanting to write , take your favorite book and critique it . Look at all aspects of it . Take it apart and study the structure , the techniques used and how the writer kept the story moving . We finished just a bit later than usual . They sat around and listened to me for half an hour . Now that 's friends for you . There is just a warmth and security you can 't get anywhere else but in the presence of people who you know really care about you . I always say this but it can 't be said enough . I love you gals . . . . and Goon . I immediately got my shower and am piled in bed doing my final post of the day . I almost forgot it . I 'm tired tonight . I did my presentation this morning . Went fine . Only about 8 people in attendance . Two just wanted to whine in public rather than call the office . I guess they wanted witnesses to their complaints . Suites me . Doesn 't change what is . Its been a difficult week and I haven 't done a lot . Told the group tonight I was at a point I was ready to chuck writing into the Ohio and watch it drift away on the tide . I 'm just worn out for some reason . I 'm needing more sleep than usual . But it is probably because the days at work have been more stressful and hectic . There were 193 tenants between 8 : 15 and 2 : 30 ! And I was out for about two hours of that . We had a lunch break as well of an hour and a half . So , basically , seven clients for each of six case managers every hour for five hours . Something like that . It was a long day . And tomorrow is only Thursday . Considering most of the week has been , I suppose I shouldn 't be surprise it is Wednesday . The only redeeming quality I see is that Writer 's Asylum will meet tonight . I 'll get to visit with some funny people and talk about what we all like to do in our " free " time , which none of us have enough of . I went to bed at 7 : 30 because I simply couldn 't see very well . I didn 't intend to doze off but I guess I did because I had a phone call wake me around 8 : 30 . I was so exhausted last night and wasn 't even aware of how much so . I chatted with friends for a bit but I was kind of worried that my nap may have finished my night . Not so . I shut the light out again at 11 : 30 and I was out in minutes . Slept all night until the clock went off at 6 : 30 . No , I did not want to get up . We have 193 recertification appointments today between 8 : 15 a . m . and 3 p . m . with an hour and a half for everyone to take lunch . That is 7 people every 15 minutes for 6 case managers . While that is going on , I have to give a presentation at the Apartment Association at 10 so I will leave within an hour of the start of recerts and probably not get back until after lunch . Our department has an hour and a half to do the presentations . There will be my boss , one inspector and me . Originally it was planned that two others would go but when I pointed out that we had so many people coming in it would be a mad house , he had to change it . Ok , got to hit the road . I need about another hour of sleep , I think . But not to be . I 'll stop and get breakfast . Have a good day . Tuesday . Good Lord , how many clouds could there possibly be ? They 've taken up permanent residence over Indiana just to keep me annoyed . There must be a terrible drought somewhere . Clouds are water vapor in the air . So if all that water is trapped in clouds , the ground must be really dry somewhere . I 'm tired . I have a cold that seems to be getting a bit worse . Still it is only a mild one so maybe I should take something . But what ? It is a head cold at this point with a mild cough starting now . I need to be in bed but I spent the day there Sunday and it didn 't help much . This afternoon I have an eye exam and my teeth cleaned . I need the glasses but my teeth , well , my insurance pays for it so I 'm going . But they always say they 're very clean . Helps if you brush your teeth regularly with the right stuff . Get an electric tooth brush , too . Went to the Y . Arm is o . k . Back hurts and neck and they did before I went to bed . I knew I was straining it because I was in too deep . But the class is too big this time . They let a lot of people in who weren 't registered and so it is crowded . Dave and Becca came over after I came home and we had pizzas and of course stories and puzzles . I told someone she chases the dark with golden hair , sunny smiles and giggles . She is just a doll baby and always cheers me up a bit . David worked on my shoulder some and it helped . Sarah told him " Be careful , Daddy , you 'll hurt Mawmaw . She 's fragile . " I still didn 't go to bed until late . I think I probably should tonight . I 'm very tired . Probably the cold on top of everything else . God , I 'm a mess . I should make this kind of stuff private , I suppose . Who wants to read a bunch of whining , moaning , groaning , mess . I have to get to work anyway so I 'll stop here . Don 't let me rain on your day . I expect nature will do enough of that . For those who have sun . Take photos so you can remember it . I saw Jilly did . Looked so lovely in her back yard . I 'd love to sit on that bench in the corner she has and watch the birds . Posted by No sun today . Once again the clouds have blanketed the sky in thick batting . It isn 't as cold as it has been , currently 39 degrees but still cold . I wanted to stay in bed today . I suppose you could say I pray every morning before I go to work . I 'm praying before I ever get out of bed . I don 't feel overly pious about it . I 'm simply repeating certain phrases . " God help me " seems to be the most predominate one . It would be funny if it wasn 't pathetic . I seem to have a stomach issue . I had it yesterday afternoon and last night . My stomach just didn 't feel really good . Still doesn 't today . Grumbly feelings and not good . I 've had to go to the bathroom several times and I 'm afraid I shouldn 't go to the Y tonight . But it so helped my arm last week . The pain has been much better this week , a sure sign it is fibro rather than something else . I suspect when I injured the muscle months ago it set up the cycle for the fibro to attack that muscle . The only thing that helps is working the muscle , even when it hurts . And I have to work through the pain rather than wait for the pain to stop . Just about kills you for the first ten minute but honestly , if you stick it out , it gets better after that . I know it is crarzy but it does work . So , I 'd really like to go , even though I want to go to bed . The lesser of two evils is depression . The pain only makes that worse so if I get relief from the pain , I 'm ahead . . . well , it looks like I 'm ahead to me . On a slightly positive note , don 't dare get too may of those in a depressing entry , I 'm sleeping better since I moved the bed . I moved the night table to the other side of the bed and I now sleep on that side . I still don 't like it much because my back is to the door and that was the side Jerry slept on but moving it has helped . I must know that the phone , light and tissue is on that side because I roll over there now to sleep . Silly . At any rate , it has taken some pressure off the left side . I still roll that way but not as much I did . I 'm stopping now and getting back to work . The day has pCynthia Maddox Oh , the plans of mice and men . . . and women . I missed church this morning . We were up until after midnight trying to install sink / new fa . . . |
Hi everyone ! This is Trixie at the wheel . We are so sorry we 've been gone for so long . And Mama is sorry too . She just hasn 't been able to get herself to blog lately . Her new job is kind of wearing her out . Mama gets home from work every day and just collapses on the couch . Me and Lily lay with her . We all squash together on one little couch . Maybe someone will take a picture of us one day . We 've got some sort of sad news . Mama thought maybe we shouldn 't come on here to write about it , since we haven 't blogged for so long . She said it would be like just showing up when we have problems , after ignoring our bloggy for so long . But me and Lily thought it would be sadder if we didn 't tell our old friends about this , after all you 've been through with us . For a long time , Sammy - Joe has been losing weight . For a while , way back in February , he kind of stopped eating for a while . He got really skinny and bony . It was weird to see , because Sammy - Joe has always been kind of . . . um . . . volumtous . Mama took him to the vet , and they tested his thyroid and tested him for some other stuff . They ended up telling Mama that nothing was wrong with him , and that he was probably just bored with dry food . So Mama started feeding him wet food instead . Which he loved ! And from then on he gobbled down as much food as anyone would give him . He also loved gobbling down kitty treats , and any meat leftover from Mama 's meals . He even ate a potato chip once ! But he didn 't really gain much weight . So a few weeks ago , Mama and her family went on vacation in Hawaii . We all went to our various boarding places . . . Lily at doggy daycare , me at my friend 's house , and Sammy - Joe at the vet . Mama asked them to do another blood test on Sammy - Joe , because she thought he might be diabetic . When Mama came back from Hawaii , she went with Grampa to the vet . I , Trixie , was going to meet them there , and they were also going to pick up Sammy - Joe . While they were there , the vet asked Mama and Grampa to come into a little room . Then , he told them that he thinks Sammy - Joe has cancer , and that he only has four or five months to live ! ! ! ! ! ! Mama got really upset . She cried and cried . Then Mama started trying to think positively . She did some research and found out that a mixture of cottage cheese and flax oil , fed in a small amount each day to a pet , has been known to help dogs and cats beat cancer . It strengthens their immune system , which is a really important part of fighting cancer . Mama also decided she wanted a second opinion about Sammy - Joe . See , when Mama talked to the vet , he said Sammy - Joe 's bones were making a high amount of white blood cells , and that it was probably cancer . But Mama thought that cancer makes you have a low amount of white blood cells ! So she was confused . Then she emailed a special vet just for cats , and the people there told her that there can be many reasons for a cat to have a high white blood cell count . They asked Mama to bring Sammy - Joe in for an exam with them . So on Wednesday , Mama is going to bring Sammy - Joe to the kitty vet and see if they can help him . Mama says , if it turns out that Sammy - Joe does have cancer , she doesn 't think she 'll put him through chemotherapy . Mama knows a little human girl who is going through chemo , and the chemo is tearing the little girl apart almost worst than her tumors were ! Mama is afraid that would be a lot of pain to put Sammy - Joe through , and that he might not even understand why , and that the treatments could even end up being what kills him . So she is worried about that . Plus , cat chemo is really expensive and Mama probably couldn 't pay for most of it . Our biggest hope is that the kitty clinic is going to say there is something else wrong with Sammy . . . something that is easily treatable . If it really is cancer , then our biggest hope is that the kitty vet will help Mama find ways to keep Sammy as healthy and happy as possible , for as long as possible . She 'll keep on giving him the flax and cottage cheese , and she 'll do whatever else the vet says she should do , and maybe we 'd even try pet reiki and things like that . So that is what is going on with us . Mama hasn 't even mentioned this to very many people in real life , because she thinks if she says " cancer " out loud , it is going to make the cancer real and give it too much power . It was two years ago today , almost to the minute , that we started our blog . And even though we didn 't get to post in it as much as we should of , during 2012 , we never forgot about all of our friends . So we thought you should know about Sammy - Joe . . . and if you can , send pawsitive thoughts our way ! Hi everyone ! Mama was telling us about this cool thing one of her friends invented . This isn 't a sponsored review or a commercial break or anything . . . we just thought it was so cool , when we heard about it , that we wanted to tell our friends about it ! Mama is in a Meetup group so she can make new friends because apparently hanging out with two dogs and a cat isn 't enough ! ( LOL , just kidding , Mama . . . we know you have to hang out with humans every so often ! ) One person at the group , a lady named Sheryl , started telling Mama about a thing she and her husband invented . It is called a Pet Petal Pullcart ! It was invented because , when Ms . Sheryl was planning her wedding , she wanted to have something even cooler than a flower girl . . . she wanted a flower dog ! She already had her very own cute little dog that would be perfect for the part . But she wanted to figure out a way for her dog to toss flower petals along the aisle as she walked ! This is a very hard trick for a dog to learn , especially since our fingers are tiny and round ! So Sheryl and her husband made a little cart that can be attached to a dog 's harness . When the dog walks , and pulls the cart , flower petals drop out of the cart ! There is one thing humans will have to do on their own . You have to teach your dog to walk down the aisle , instead of running around like a crazed raccoon with the cart ! Ms . Sheryl 's website says that this is a pretty easy trick to teach a dog . You start out by standing a little far away from your dog , showing them a treat , and having them walk towards you . ( We two dogs already know how to do this , because Mama teaches us " sit - stay " with cheese or hotdog pieces all the time ! ) We think maybe the dog will run towards you down the aisle . If you want him to walk slowly , that might take more training ! LOL ! Or maybe the dog could just be trained to walk behind someone in front of him , and the human in front of him can be secretly holding a treat in their hand ! We don 't know if any of our friends ' humans are getting married . . . but if they are , and they want you to be in the wedding , maybe they can order you one of these ! They have to put in an order a long time before the wedding , because it needs to be custom built according to your weight . Isn 't that so cool ? When Ms . Sheryl told Mama about it , Mama used her cellphone to find the website right away , because she thought it was so cute ! It almost makes Mama want to get married , just so we can all be in her wedding ! ( Lily and Sammy - Joe have an idea ! We think Mama should order a cart anyway , for Trixie 's size . Then , she can attach Trixie to it , and Trixie can take us for rides ! ) Hi everyone ! Lily here ! You 'll never guess what a weird day I had yesterday ! Mama dropped me off at my doggie daycare in the morning . I don 't usually go to daycare , but Mama is going out of town pretty soon and I will be staying there for a week for boarding , so she wants me to get used to being there . So I was hanging out with some of the dogs , having fun , relaxing , etc . Then a lady came and picked me up . She took me to a different room . Well , not all of it , exactly , But a lot of it . She also shaved my butt area . Suddenly I felt so naked ! I was so happy when Mama came to pick me up . I was sure she 'd have a fit when she found out what the weird lady did to my fur ! But instead , Mama was laughing and smiling and petting me ! She kept saying how cute I was , and how I 'd be so much cooler on the hot days . She also said something about how it would be way easier for her to wash the squirrel poop off of me when I roll around in it outside . She said maybe I wouldn 't have to take so many baths ! Which is kind of good , because the day before that Mama gave me two baths in a row , and she still called me stinky . Still , though . This is not something I ever imagined would happen to me ! Do you see the tiny ribbons in my hair ? I think I look like I have no ears . But Mama keeps on saying how cute I look . What do you think ? Posted by Hi everyone ! This is Lily ! The other day Trixie told you that I was going to come here and tell you about something really cool that I did . Well , the church that our Mama sometimes goes to ( when she can manage to get up early on a Sunday ) has a Blessing Of The Animals service every summer . Everyone is allowed to bring their pets , and the service is all about animals ! So , Mama and I went to it . Mama wanted to bring everyone , but Sammy - Joe probably wouldn 't like it , and Trixie gets kind of hyper around other dogs and its hard for Mama to handle us both by herself . I am lucky because I am the calmest and the most portable dog , so I went with Mama to represent all of the animals in our family . Also , during the service , dogs and cats didn 't have to sit quietly or anything . We were all on leashes , but we could move around and sniff each other 's butts , and try to get petted and everything . We were sitting next to a giant Alaskan Malamute who really loved sniffing me ! Here 's me , right after the service . The reason Mama 's hand is on me is because she only had her phone camera , which is really slow , and every time she 'd try to take a picture of me I 'd move at the last minute and make it blurry . So she was holding me still . You can see I was kind of annoyed . Then , after the service , we got to walk around and talk to people and pets . I sniffed so many butts ! Some people had dog treats that they passed out to us ! I met a really nice lady who kept giving me lots of treats ! I am usually shy around new people , but after she gave me a treat or two , I just jumped up on her and wagged my tail like we were best friends ! She had two dogs . One was a chihuahua . The other was a mixed breed dog who didn 't really like other dogs , but he liked me ! One of the nicest parts was that there was a table where people could put photos of their pets who went to the Rainbow Bridge . Mama made this really nice picture of our family members at the Rainbow Bridge . . . Woody , Zip and Chopper . Isn 't it sweet ? We think its funny that in one picture , the bird is eating the dog 's bone , and in another picture , the dog is eating the bird 's ball ! Zip and Woody , who were Mama 's pets when she was a little kid , were the best of friends . Unfortunately , both of them passed away very young , which broke my Mama 's heart . Fortunately , she got Chopper right after that , which healed her heart a little ! AND NOW FOR A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY ! Did you know that the Catholic religion actually has an official Blessing Of the Animals day ? well , technically it 's one of the Saint days , or Feast Days I think they 're called . It 's in honor of St . Francis of Assisi . St . Francis loved all animals . In fact , he referred to all animals as his brothers and sisters . He would even preach to them about God , and they would sit and listen ! There are many stories about things St . Francis did for animals . In one story , he was sleeping in a cave ( St . Francis lived much of his life in poverty , on purpose ) and he gave up his bed to a donkey . In one story , someone asked St . Francis to free a rabbit from a trap . St . Francis freed the rabbit , and told him he should be more careful in the future . But instead of hopping away , the rabbit jumped up on St . Francis 's lap and refused to leave ! Another story says that , whenever St . Francis was near by and saw fish being caught , he would free the fish and warn them to be more careful . When he went out in a boat , fish would gather around his boat and listen to his sermons , and not leave until he was done ! A famous story tells about a wolf that was very hungry , and had been attacking and eating people in a village ! Some people tried to kill the wolf , but he attacked them and ate them . Finally , St . Francis went out to talk with the wolf . He saw that the wolf was hungry , and asked him to make a pact . The people of the village would feed the wolf , and in exchange , he would not attack any people or animals in the village . He held out his hand to the wolf , and the wolf gave him his paw . From then on , the wolf and the people lived in harmony , and when the wolf finally died of old age , the people were sad because he 'd become a member of the community . One more story talks about how St . Francis saw a little boy who had caught some doves in a cage , and was planning to sell them . St . Francis worried that the doves would be killed and eaten , or otherwise harmed . He spoke to the little boy about how sweet and gentle doves were , and how they were a symbol of peace . The little boy agreed to let the doves go . Then St . Francis began building nests around the monastery for doves to live in , so that they would be safe . St . Francis usually rode on his loyal donkey . At the end of St . Francis 's life , when he was in his death bed , St . Francis thanked his donkey for carrying him and helping him . And his donkey wept . You see why St . Francis is Mama 's favorite saint , even though she is not Catholic ? St . Francis 's Feast Day is on October 4 . He is the Patron Saint of Animals . Some Catholic churches , especially Franciscan churches , celebrate this day with a Blessing Of the Animals . At a traditional Catholic animal blessing , a friar says a special prayer for each pet , and then sprinkles the pet with holy water . Since Mama is Unitarian Universalist , and the UU 's march to the beat of our own drummer , our blessing was in July and St . Francis was not mentioned . Also nobody put water on me . Thank goodness ! But Mama does say she wants to take us to a traditional blessing at a Catholic church this October . If you want to find one , you could Google Franciscan churches in your area , or just Google " blessing of the animals " and your state . AmericanCatholic . org has a website where you can search for a blessing , by town or state . But not all churches submit their info to the site , so if you don 't see one in your area on that site , keep looking on your own ! Maybe you could even arrange one at your own church , or at an animal rescue organization ! Well , I really wasn 't planning on telling you all about St . Francis , but Mama thinks he 's such a cool dude , and she thought we should share him with you . Even if you 're not Catholic or even Christian , St . Francis is a great role model for people who love animals ! That 's it for now . By , friends ! We love you ! Posted by Here in Illinois it is soooooooooo hot ! We don 't even like to be outside ! Mama put a small blow - up swimming pool outside in the yard , in hopes that Lily and me would get in it to cool off . Lily went in it only if Mama was sitting in it , and then she just walked around . Me . . . I wasn 't sure what to think of it ! Gramma picked me up and put me in it , and it felt really weird and cold on my feet . I wasn 't sure if I was allowed to get out , so I just stood there . I 'm such an obedient dog ! Maybe we will try the pool again next week . Sammy - Joe seems to have started eating a little more again . And his poops , we all noticed , are looking better . He 's been a little ornery though , and has been hiding a lot . Personally , I think he 's mad that Mama won 't take him outside on his leash , because she thinks it is too hot for him ! OMG , did anyone hear those fireworks the other night ? Lily and I hated it ! They went on for days ! Mama and Grampa took us for a walk that first night , and people in our neighborhood were shooting of fireworks . We were so scared ! We kept trying to head back to the house , and Lily got Mama to pick her up and carry her most of the way . By the third day , the fireworks had stopped , and I was feeling brave again . But not Lily ! Even though we couldn 't hear fireworks any more , she was still scared to take a walk for a few nights ! Mama had to carry her down the street , set her down to pee and poo , and then carry her back ! Or else she would just plop her little fuzzy butt down and refuse to move ! She 's such a little baby . In other news , I wanted to ask you all if any of your humans like to read . You may know that our Mama likes to write . She found out that you can publish ebooks directly to Kindle , and they can be read by anyone who owns a Kindle ! So Mama did that . She has one book called Skye Blue , and one book called What Some Call Heaven . A few people have already bought her books . Mama says more people would buy them if there were some reviews on their Amazon pages . So we had this idea ! If any of your humans like to read , tell them that we will send them a free copy of one of Mama 's ebooks ! We could send it as a Word , or PDF , and you could read it on your e - reader or your regular computer . Then , you could write a review on Amazon for the book ! It doesn 't have to be a long review . Just a few sentences . And you could use a fake name or something if you don 't want Mama to know it was you who wrote it . But that way , more people would notice Mama 's books and buy them for themselves on their Kindles ! SKYE BLUE is about 305 pages long . It is about a girl named Skye who is being raised by her older brother , who rescued her from their abusive parents when she was little . Her older brother also has a drinking and drug problem , and doesn 't take great care of Skye . The book is about Skye 's adventures in trying to keep up with and deal with her brother , whom she loves fiercely and never wants to be separated from , even though he has so many problems . This book has a lot of swearing in it , just to warn you . Mama was younger when she first wrote it , and in the settings where this book takes place , people do swear a lot . So if you hate foul language , you might not want this one ! WHAT SOME CALL HEAVEN is only about 75 pages and is an easier read . Like the other book , it also involves homeless people . In this book , a young girl shows up at a city homeless shelter , and introduces herself to everyone as an angel . The girl , and the things she talks about , don 't match most of the people 's ideas of angels and Heaven . Many people think the girl is crazy , or at least confused . They try to decide how they can help her , because they 're pretty sure a girl like her won 't last long on the streets ! This book may not correspond entirely with your religious beliefs , no matter what religion you are . . . so if you do not like to read books that have ideas that are sort of different from your religion , you might not like this book . We hope you will read one of these books and review it for Mama on Amazon ! If you don 't , though , we understand . . . not everyone has an e - reader , and it can be kind of time - consuming to try to read it on a computer . That 's it for today ! But tomorrow or the next day , I think Lily is going to tell you about another one of her adventures ! Hi everyone ! It 's me , Sammy - Joe , taking over the blog for a moment here . How are you ? I am okay . Except my poops are really mushy . That doesn 't bother me , but it bothers Mama and Gramma and Grampa for some reason ! They also didn 't like it when I puked all over the place . Plus , they noticed that I was losing a lot of weight . This is the part that doesn 't make sense ! All my life , they kept calling me a fat kitty , and even the vet said I needed to cut down on the treats ! And now that I 've dropped a few pounds , they say I am too skinny . So guess what Mama did ? She took me to the V - E - T ! The vet was really mean because he took some of my blood away . Now , how is that supposed to help me ? Mama says the vet told her I have great blood and nothing is wrong with it . That was the good news . Then the vet told her she needed to switch my food , to a prescription brand that is gentle on my stomach . That is the bad news ! I have been eating Meow Mix since I was a kitten ! Mama bought it for me because she liked the cats in the commercials who sang , " Meow , meow , meow , meow ! " Maybe she thought I would sing like that ? Either way , I like my Meow Mix ! Mama started out by mixing a little of the new food in with my Meow Mix . That was okay . Then she started sneakily adding more and more of the new food . When it turned into almost all new food and barely any Meow Mix , I decided to boycott my food ! Then , this morning , I puked all over the place . Grampa saw it and he says I " projectile vomited ! " Mama started saying I had to eat ! She was getting really worried about me ! Then she did something that was kind of nice . She took one of these cube thingies . It looks like a little tiny cube , but when you put it in hot water , it turns into chicken soup ! Mama made some of that soup stuff . And then she poured some in my food ! It smelled great and tasted great ! So I started chowing down my food . The question is , AM I SICK ? I don 't know ! I 've been kind of tired lately . I have been losing lots of weight . Mama says my poops are looking better . ( Why is she even looking at my poop ? ) But she doesn 't like that I keep puking . So , I thought , just in case , I better ask all my friends out there for some pawsitive thoughts . I need to stay healthy so I can help take care of Mama ! Thanks , friends ! Meanwhile , I hope you like the picture of me at the top of this post ! Mama added on to my house . Now I have this little tunnel thing here . Grampa says he 's going to throw it away , and he calls it a box . I say , if he does that , I will bite him ! Posted by Hi everyone ! This is tiny little Lily ! Way back when we were still on our bloggy break , do you know our Mama left us ? She left us for some other dogs ! Can you believe that ? I was so mad . Mama said she was just trying to help those other doggies , because their parents went on vacation . She came back to visit us every day for a little while , but she said she had to sleep at the house with the other doggies . They even slept in the bed with her . CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ? ? ? Mama showed us some pictures of the other doggies . Their names were Reggie and Dannyboy . They were both rescued dogs like Trixie was . Reggie came from the same animal rescue place that saved Trixie . And Dannyboy was a stray from Texas ! ( Dannyboy is only a puppy , even though he 's waaaaaaaay bigger than me . ! Do you know that Reggie is part poodle , just like me ? He 's also part Bichon , not like me . Reggie needs a rest . Sitting pretty ! Now Reggie has the Kong ! " Hello ? Hello ? Is there anyone out there ? " On the third day Mama said it was okay for me to come to the other house and have a sleepover . I was a little nervous because I know sometimes other dogs don 't like a strange dog showing up . But Reggie and Dannyboy were so nice to me ! " Should I tell him that 's not even a real bone ? " I don 't know what we were looking at here . I wish we had an actual rawhide ! We were all supposed to sleep in the guest bedroom at the house . Dannyboy was supposed to sleep on the floor , and Reggie and I were supposed to sleep on the bed with Mama . But Dannyboy was so upset because he wasn 't allowed on the bed ( His parents say he sheds too much ) and he kept crying . And I couldn 't sleep , so I kept jumping on and off the bed . So finally , Mama brought the bedspread out into the living room , and we all lay down together ! Actually Reggie and Dannyboy wrestled half the night , until they got too tired . Mama says , when she woke up in the morning , she saw three dog noses staring at her ! Hi friends ! This is Sammy - Joe ! Here in Chicago , the weather is nice and warm . My doggie sisters love to go outside and play every day . They get taken outside several times a day because they need to pee and poo out there . Since I pee and poo in my litter box , and since cats can escape a yard more easily than dogs , I have to stay in most of the time . But when Mama bought a new harness for Lily , she thought it might actually fit on me , too ! Lily and I are about the same size . Mama and Gramma put the harness on me . At first , I didn 't want anything to do with it . I was like , " What is this contraption ? Get me out of here ! " I thought it would be just like all those times they stuffed me in a box and took me to the vet ! Plus , the whole thing smelled like Lily . And you know me and Lily don 't get along so well , right ? Why would I want to put on something that makes me stink like my yucky sister ? Then Mama carried me outside to the yard . She put me down . And I got to walk around and explore the yard , just like my sisters ! The doggies were very nice and gave me space . Mama took some pictures of me relaxing outside . Want to see them ? I am watching bugs crawl around on the ground . You can barely see me here , but I am trying to crawl under the grill ! It is fun to get all full of dirt , isn 't it ? Here is Lily giving me my space . I kinda wish she 'd give me more space than that . . . but at least she isn 't barking at me ! Mama says she 'll take me outside for a while every day , if I 'll let her put the harness on me ! I think this is going to be a great summer ! Posted by Psst ! Over here ! Its me , Lily ! Me and Trixie and Sammy - Joe have been gone for tifty years ! Or an hour ! ( I have no concept of time . ) But guess what . . . Mama says we can come back in just a few days ! We 've been working hard at putting a brand new header up and redecorating our blog . Mama says you 're going to see us for Wordless Wednesday this week ! I 'm not supposed to be typing this . . . but I was so excited , I could hardly wait ! I had to come and give you a sneak preview ! Hi everyone ! We weren 't allowed to post it on the blog because Gramma and Grampa didn 't want anyone to know the house was empty , but we have already been on our big " vacation ! " We all survived ! In fact , Mama even managed to relax a little , and she had fun swimming at the hotel . She says she had the pool all to herself , most of the time , so she got to practice her back float ! Lily stayed at a doggy boarding place right near our house . Its called Baxter And Beasley , and it is run by a family . They also have a doggy day care there . We posted before how Lily was going to visit the doggy day care a few times before she actually slept over ! Mama 's favorite thing about Baxter And Beasley is that they take pictures of the dogs in the day care all day long , and post them on Facebook at the end of the day . So if you " like " them on Facebook , while you 're away you can check out what your dog has been up to ! Mama said that it made her feel a lot better , each day when she was at the hotel , to come home after student teaching and check out the Facebook page . She actually saved some of the pictures so we could show you . Wanna see ? See if you can spot her in each of these pictures ! ( There is a whole bunch of them ! ) The blurry dog next to Lily in this picture is her good friend Vita . They really liked playing together ! We think this dog looks like the His Master 's Voice dog ! Can you spot Lily in this picture ? Lily hanging with the big dogs ! Someone was about to give Lily a treat ! Where 's Lily ? She 's very tiny . Do you see her way over by the wall , with her friend Vita ? The rest of us didn 't get any pictures taken , but we did have a pretty good time ! Sammy - Joe got lots of sleep , and Trixie had a nice visit with her friend Susan from the vet 's office . Mama sent us all with our overnight bags , full of the blankets she had slept with to get her smell on them , and a few toys ! We all did fine . And now its over . Lily says she kind of misses her doggy day care , actually . . . but Mama has promised she can go back to visit ! Sorry for the lack of posts lately . Mama is student teaching , and she 's busy every minute writing her lesson plans or making things for her lessons ! She 's exhausted ! She did take us outside in the backyard for a few hours today to enjoy the nice weather . We will try to grab some time to come visit all of our friends ' blogs in the next few days ! Posted by |
The clues were all there - - the biggest clue being that this was someone I met on THE BUS . I gave him the benefit of the doubt since I , too , was on the bus , and therefore there must occasionally be some normal people on the bus . We chat , and when we get back to town he suggests we meet for a beer . I didn 't have anything else to do , so I thought , what the hell , I 'll just stay for a little while . He proceeded to get maudlin - drunk on just two beers , and started telling me all these horrible stories . Like how his 7 - years - older brother used to break his bones ON PURPOSE , including a compound fracture of his right leg , which of course he wanted me to feel . Then he starts telling me that his brother finally stopped doing this when he started doing it back . I 'm thinking , " completely demented , but some kids are , " but then he says , " so that was about five years ago , " meaning that he and his brother were still beating the crap out of each other at ages 24 and 31 , respectively ! His next heartwarming story is about the girl he was engaged to , who aborted their child and broke off the engagement one month before the wedding . By this point he 's sobbing , I 'm horrified to the point of speechlessness , and he decides to take offense and get nasty when I try to find something to say to express sympathy . Freaky , especially when I 'm dealing with a guy who seems to think that breaking his brother 's arm is an appropriate response to an adult argument . Oh , but wait - - apparently thinking that he 's on a roll or that we are making an emotional connection or something , he next tells me about trying to save an entire family whose car has fallen into a frozen lake . After his psycho - brother has saved the mother , he goes down to save two kids and finally the baby , who dies in his arms from being in the lake too long , and he blacks out and wakes up in the hospital with a bunch of broken ribs from psycho - brother trying to restart his heart , since he almost died too . Now he 's crying really hard , and tells me that he goes to sleep every night still seePosted by I had been dating a guy for a few weeks when he called me at work . I picked up the phone and said , " hello " only to hear pig snorting noises on the other side . I didn 't know who it was , and so I hung up the phone . He called right back and admitted it was him , but never gave any explanation as to why he was snorting . I should have known something was weird with this guy right then , but I kind of ignored it . But the animal noise thing continued . He started leaving messages with just barking or meowing on them . No explanation . I only called him back if he left me a real voice message , since I didn 't want to encourage this odd behavior . But it continued . Then he started doing it in person too . I realized that any time I brought up any subject which made him uncomfortable he 'd " change the subject " by imitating some animal . But in general he was a good guy , and I enjoyed his company , so I tried to ignore this weird trait which he seemed to think I 'd find endearing . This culminated about two months into the relationship when I asked him if he 'd like for us to be dating exclusively . " Moo ! " He said . " Moo ! Moo ! " " I guess not . " I said . And that was the end of that relationship . - - Ann A nice guy paid for my tickets into a local ball game , and , after I had written to reimburse him , he asked me if I wanted to go out . I wasn 't particularly attracted to him , but he 'd done me a favor and I figured a night out couldn 't hurt . He made a point of telling me over the phone that he was Christian , which I was okay with . I didn 't realize just how into his faith he was , however , until we got into his car ( which was so old it had a button ignition ! ) and he popped a tape of ancient hymns on the stereo . . . So , we went to the beach listening to Georgic chants . Once we were there , he began talking about how dedicated he was to his faith and about how he didn 't want a girlfriend , as he was planning on joining a monastery as soon as his SON turned eighteen - - more things I didn 't know about . Finally I asked him , " If you don 't want a girlfriend , why did you ask me out ? " He confessed he thought that having female friends would benefit him in his " quest " and that I would be perfect for helping him resist " the temptations of the flesh , " as he put it . That was about it for me , I had him take me home . Now when a guy says he 's Christian , I try to make sure what he 's interested in before I go out with him . . . - - Name Withheld My dating disaster dates back a Zillion years : my graduation party . I ended up with the man of my dreams in the back of my Volkswagen beetle . He was wearing whatever ; I was wearing my left boot . The latter had gotten stuck under the drivers seat with my foot in it - - don 't ask me why - - and I was trying to free myself , giggling hysterically , when the door of my car opened and a cop jovially said " Goooood Morning ! ! " I jumped , kicked out , and knocked the driver 's seat of the rail . Meanwhile the cop was heaving the time of his life , as I was naked AND spreadeagled , pinned under the seat . My friend was grinning , as he miraculously was wearing all his clothes and was only slightly disarrayed . It took us ten minutes to convince the cop to leave , and another twenty minutes to get the seat back on the track . . . - - Kate I am a law enforcement officer . So , I don 't take much nonsense from men . So I knew it was bad news when I agreed to go out for a date with a guy I met . . . on the job . Actually , on the job as I arrested him ! As if that 's not ominous enough , he was arrested by me . . . for indecent exposure . It is a very small town , and I have known this guy by name for a while , so I really felt obliged to take him up on the offer . We met at a local diner two days after I nabbed him . One of the first things that suggested he was a little kooky was that he was wearing a clown suit . I asked him why and he said it was because he was working at a party . But this was totally false , I later learned , he had just worn it because he was too broke to get any other clothes after we released him . He had gone straight to the Salvation Army in his county jail suit and the clown costume was all they could offer him . The next thing I realized was crazed was that he ordered 2 dinners , at the same time . At this point I seriously questioned if he had any money to pay . . . I asked , not to be rude , and he just opened his mouth and told me his gold fillings were worth at least 34 bucks . I had gotten about enough , and I was ready to leave cash on the table and run out when I realized he had defecated in my food while I was in the restroom . Really . This was certainly grounds for arrest . I stood up and told him that the date was over and he was to address me not by my first name but as an officer . A disastrous date , yes , but another criminal off the streets . - - Name Withheld I met a guy online , and we decided to meet so we made a date at a nearby theater . Besides that fact that his picture looked NOTHING like him . . . he was odd . Reminded me of the guy in the movie Sling Blade . So , we go into the movie , sitting near the back . He talked the WHOLE time . About 30 minutes into it , he leans over and says , " So , you wanna have kids , right ? " And he wasn 't even attempting to whisper . I just nodded . So then he wants to know if I want them " at this age , like , real soon . " I spent the whole rest of the movie thinking of ways to get in my car without his touching me . It was awful . Luckily , I got away with just a handshake . Never again . . . - - Name Withheld The neighbor who lived in the apartment behind me had been lurking around my place for weeks , trying to get me to go out for a drink with him . Finally , I relented . I mean , the guy seemed normal : was a cyclist , worked as an animal specialist at the zoo , was pretty cute . . . Plus , I hadn 't dated since I broke up with my boyfriend a year ago and it was time to get back out there . I figured , what could possibly go wrong ? I walked over to his apartment before the date , and he asked me if I would mind driving , since he 'd just had a couple of beers . He didn 't seem soused or anything , but I though that was pretty responsible of him . So , we went to dinner , chatted for a while , and generally had a nice time . During the conversation , he confessed that for the last few years he 'd been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and hadn 't gone out much socially because he simply didn 't have the energy . He 'd really been looking forward to going out with me , and getting reintroduced to social life . The telling of this painful story required consumption of another 2 or 3 beers . After dinner , we went to a club to dance and listen to music . He downed still more beer , and later whispered to me conspiratorially , " Want a Valium ? I brought extras ! " I politely refused , but he insisted , so I smiled and slipped it into my pocket saying , " I 'll take it later . " After a while he started to look a little green , so I suggest that we step outside for some air . He agreed and grabbed my hand and headed for the door . Just as he pushed the outside door open with his free hand , he passed out stone cold and fell forward onto the bouncer like a ton of bricks , dragging me forward with the vise - like grip of his other hand ! The bouncer managed to lay him down on the ground and pry his hand off of my wrist . A guest who was an off duty paramedic checked him out and suggested that we call an ambulance . We were close enough to the hospital that I decided to drive him myself , so I pulled up the car and they poured him into the passenger seat . He came to a few secoPosted by My Junior year of High School I agreed to go out with a friend of mine - he should have remained just that and nothing more . I really didn 't want to go , but was polite and gave him a chance . We decided to go the relatively tame route and just go see a movie . We got to the movie theater where 99 . 9 % of the movies actually sounded good and worth seeing . The date , though , wanted to see the one movie that just made my stomach turn . No negotiations , case closed . As we got up to the window , my date paid for his ticket and walked away , leaving me to pay for a ticket to a movie that I don ? t want to see . For the first time in my life , I actually brought along enough money for cab fare should I truly need an escape . The thought of leaving was pretty attractive . But I paid anyway and entered the theater to find him standing at the concession waiting for me . He asked me what I wanted to eat , to which I replied that I wasn 't hungry . He then said , " Oh , all girls eat at movies . " So , to shut him up , I told him I 'd have a box of raisinettes . He told the guy at the concession stand that I wanted raisinettes and walked away . So I paid for the candy that I don 't want to eat , and went off to find him in the theater playing the movie I don 't want to watch , calculating in my head how much money I had left for cab fare . Thank goodness they play those memorable movie scene slides before the previews start . Otherwise we would have had to come up with conversation on our own ? not that his conversation was much better . A scene from some Star Trek movie flashed up and he proceeded to relay the entire ridiculous plot . Then they showed an ad for a movie about alien abduction . He spilled his guts about how he 's been abducted by aliens . You know , at that point , I sort of believed him . After the movie the guy actually suggested going parking ! I mumbled an excuse about having to be up early and that I should really get home . Back at my house , I tried to make a quick and painless escape but he stopped me with , " Don 't I at least get a hug good - bye ? " I hugPosted by Years ago , I agreed to go on a blind date to the movies with one of my brother 's old friends . When he showed up at my house , I opened the door to what seemed like a time warp . He was wearing his Army dress uniform . I couldn 't believe it I mean , these aren 't the 1950s ! Maybe I was being dramatic , but I just thought it was strange . He asked if I wanted to go to a theater or a drive - in . To avoid being seen ( or to give him the opportunity to live out his 1950s fantasy ) I opted for the drive - in . On the way there he sang he favorite tune - the Green Beret theme . At the drive in , I kid you not , he whistled at the girls walking by the car . I sat so close to the car door , Ford was imprinted on my arm for weeks after . I don 't even remember the movie . My brother had the last laugh , he knew this guy was a creep . He just didn 't tell me till later . Never date your brother 's friends . - - Name Withheld I am an avid dater and am quite familiar with generally accepted norms of dating protocol . My choices of whom I date however , show a lack of common sense - - or psychic intuition ! So it 's 20 minutes into the New Year and we arrived back at his place after attending two parties . I met this guy on an Internet dating service two days prior and things seemed to be just great ! We were both exhausted from having stayed up together all night the night before . We sat on the couch and he turned his back to me and proceeded to talk to his cat . He apologized to the cat for not being there for it at midnight and verbalized various other sweet - nothings . I sat there for a good two or three minutes letting them have their " private time " . What the hell was the matter with this guy ? I eventually felt so uncomfortable that I asked him if there was anything I could do to entertain myself . He abruptly got up , headed to the bathroom and emerged holding a box of dental floss . He broke off a long thread then handed me the box and said , " Let 's floss . " He sat back down on the couch and proceeded to floss at the cat . So I ? m sitting there holding this box of floss thinking , " This is not my life . Would the real life please stand up ? " I sat there in bewilderment for another couple of minutes . Then I spoke up , " I can 't let flossing be the first thing I do in the New Year even as important as I think dental hygiene is . " He pow - wowed with the cat for another three minutes ? I swear he was asking advice - - and concluded that we should all call it a night . Again , another rotten over - hyped New Year 's that ends in utter disbelief of the possibility that people like this are walking amongst the unsuspecting public ! - - Chalene I have been on some truly mortifying dates but I think this one qualifies for the absolute worst . My mother had a friend at work who always talked about her only - - and close to perfect - - child : a son , in his early twenties , handsome , smart , talented , creative and best of all available ! As luck would have it , I was to be home from college on a weekend when " wonder boy " would be around and the two mothers conspired to set us up on a blind date . We were going to dinner and I dressed in excited anticipation of our meeting . At 7 : 00 sharp ? Andy ? pulls up in front of the house . I 'm watching out the window and so far so good - - he 's dressed well , on time , etc . Introductions are made all around and we leave to get in the car . As I get in the front seat , I notice a small figure sitting in the shadows in back . Andy would like to introduce me to his close friend Chester - - who happens to be a ventriloquist 's dummy . The rest of the evening was spent with Chester acting as our go between . He came to the restaurant with us , ordered food and made lively conversation . I had to draw the line when Chester and Andy suggested dancing after dinner . The evening was a near religious experience , with me praying continually that we would not run into anyone I knew . Arriving home , the " boys " walked me to the door and proceeded to argue over who got to kiss me goodnight while I quietly slipped into the house and slammed the door in their faces . - - Name Withheld I was recently asked out on a date by a total hunk ? I mean , this guy made me weak in the knees . I was so nervous about making conversation with him on our fist date , that I suggested we check out a visiting short film festival . At least that way , all I would have to say every so often would be , " That was good . " Surely I could handle that . Before we sat down for the films , Paul bought me a cappuccino , which I finished in about 5 minutes . After the 2 hour screening , there was a reception where we met the directors , met some of the actors , and mingled with the crowd . Then I told my date I needed to go to the ladies room . When I got there , I nearly died of embarrassment when I looked in the mirror and saw a ring of cappuccino froth and chocolate across the bridge of my nose ! I couldn 't believe the # @ * ! let me sit through 2 hours of movie watching and crowd mingling and not tell me about it ! Needless to say , I never saw him again ! - - Anita One night I went out to a club with a friend of my father 's . He 's a much older man , but I enjoy his company and we go out on the town every once in a while . Anyway , we were out having cocktails and a drink was spilled on my pants . We had planned to go out to a busy restaurant after drinking to get something to eat . I suggested that we swing by my house first so I could change . Being a little buzzed up , I wasn 't paying much attention to what I was doing . I ran into the house quickly to throw on a pair of dry pants and ran back to the car . We finally got to the restaurant and it was packed with people I knew including parents of some of my friends . As a walked across the restaurant to our table , I noticed people kind of staring at me . I didn 't know what the problem was until I got to my seat . ' Are they yours ? ' my father 's friend asked . He pointed to a pair of underwear that were sticking to my pants on the outside . I wanted to die as I crawled under the table . It was the most embarrassing moment of my life . I guess everyone thought I just had a quickie and forgot to put my underwear back on . I use downy in my rinse water at all times now to avoid static cling ! - - Cheryl I had an affair with a married man . I know , I know , it 's wrong , it 's a betrayal of my fellow womankind , these things only end in disaster , but nevertheless , I did it . We worked at the same company , so we had a lot of opportunity to be together on the road . Our office was in Manhattan and I lived there , but he lived in the suburbs . So he 'd come over to my place after work a lot and stayed over a fair amount , telling his wife he had to work late and was crashing at the company apartment in the city . The only person in my life who knew about us was my roommate . From the start he told me he would leave his wife , but for one reason or another kept putting it off ( she was sick , their son was having problems in school , etc . , etc . ) For four torturous years this went on , then , finally , he told me he was leaving her . He called me at work and asked me to meet him for a drink to talk about what this meant for us and our relationship . I couldn 't have been happier , and nearly ran the few blocks to the bar . When I entered , he was sitting at a table and my roommate was there with him . In my excitement , I only thought this was a nice gesture to show how fully he was planning to join my life . When I sat down , the two of them told me that they had been together for over a year and were getting married . He had left his wife for my roommate . - - Name Withheld I had been dating this guy Brad for several months , when I went to visit him in Boston . ( I lived an hour and a half away . ) He picked me up at the bus station with two other people in the car , his roommate John whom I 'd met before and a woman I 'd never met named Catherine . I got into the front seat and we drove off to dinner . Periodically throughout the night Brad would refer to Catherine as " Cathy " and she would quickly correct him : " Catherine , " she 'd say emphatically . As we drove home from dinner and this happened for the umpteenth time , I finally turned around to look at her and said , " Oh , Brad 's just calling you Cathy because he has this ex - girlfriend named Cathy . This horrible woman who just can 't get over him and still thinks that maybe they 'll get married someday and so she calls up at all hours of the night crying and trying to win him back even though he 's dating me . He keeps telling her he 's not interested , and she just won 't get the message . What a loser . I mean she 's got to get on with her life ! " People were pretty silent after my outburst , and a few minutes later we dropped John and Catherine off . At which point Brad turns to me and says : " Um , that WAS Cathy . " Turns out , she 'd really wanted to meet me and he 'd agreed to this stupid plan of inviting her out under a " pseudonym . " Hey , she deserved it . . . - - J . F . I woke up recently after a night out drinking with the girls with a bit of a headache and not much memory of the evening . But I found all of my receipts and bar tabs and chalked it up to a good night - - until 5 : 00 o ' clock rolled around and my phone rang . " Carl ? Ummmm . . . yes . . . I met you last night ? We talked ? I gave you my number ? Hmm ? " My dilemma was this : was he in fact some hot stud I had been eyeballing or was he just some guy I wanted off my back and so I gave him my number to make him go away ? If it was the latter I would have probably given him my digits with a wrong number or two thrown into the mix , so that leaves the former . I guess I really dug this stud . I went with it and set up a date . The week went along and Friday night we were to meet . I met him there since I like to have my own get - away car . I was early and had the host seat me somewhere I could keep the whole bar and restaurant in view and assess the situation . About five minutes later in walks a very buff , beefy - like character . Like he had ham hocks strapped on his thighs . Let 's just say I am a vegetarian , both in my food consumption and in my taste for men . This was surely the wrong guy ! There must be some mistake ! The man dwarfed Arnold and made a mockery of Sylvester ! I mean , this man was huge . He sat down and I tried to be pleasant and not stare because his tree trunk neck is bigger than my waist . We order food and he orders the T - bone . I usually don 't care when people eat meat in front of me , but for some reason it did this time . Maybe it 's because this Carl ended up being a total perv . With every bite of carnage , out spewed some sexual comment . " So , where do you like to have sex ? " Bite . " What 's your favorite thing to do to a guy ? " Bite . Was this guy really asking me this ? I tried to laugh it off and told him I didn 't think it was appropriate to be talking this candidly about sex on a first date . He said he thought people were too conservative about sex and it would be best if people just opened up . Bite . In with the carnage , out witPosted by A friend of mine , whom we 'll call Kristin , moved to Boston with her boyfriend from college , Jim . After a few years of living together she started hinting around that it was time to make a bigger commitment . So it was that she was very psyched when Jim came back from a two week vacation to Venezuela with a beautiful diamond ring . He asked her to marry him and she said yes . Called up her parents , told them , the whole shebang . Several days later , Kristin gets a phone call at home . A woman with a heavy Spanish accent asks for Jim . Kristin said he wasn 't there , and Miss Spanish Accent asks who she is . " I 'm his girlfriend , " said Kristin . " NO ! " came back the answer . " I ' M his girlfriend . " Turns out , Jim had brought back from South America a diamond ring AND a 17 year old Venezuelan girl he had holed up in a motel down the street . Jim came home that day to find both women sitting in the living room waiting for him . What he was thinking nobody knows to this day , since Kristin only spoke to him long enough to run outside and throw her new ring into the depths of the Charles river . Postscript : Jim married the Venezuelan , and Kristin has found someone she adores who 's a lot more trustworthy . . . - - Michelle I met this guy in a bar and had a great time talking all night . When he called for a date , I was pretty excited . He told me to think of something I 'd like to do , and I decided that either the movies or a comedy show would be a good idea for a first date . Apparently , my guy had other ideas . . . He said movies " suck " and that comedy shows are " stupid " . He had ME pick HIM up and said we were going to grab something to eat . Where we ended up was at a sub shop where , instead of letting me get my own sub , he offered me a bite of his ham and cheese . I declined . I was thinking that this really wasn 't going well , but I couldn 't possibly have had an idea of how much worse it was going to get . He told me I would absolutely LOVE the place he was taking me . We arrived in front of a bar that is infamous for it 's Goth interior and transsexual clientèle . Suddenly , a man in fishnets and a mini - skirt approached me for a dance , which my date got very excited about . At that point , Mr . Mini - Skirt was more appealing than my date , but I turned down the dance , and just wanted to go home . My date then wanted to take me to eat again , and we went to a little diner . He told me he wanted steak tips & eggs , but didn 't want to order them both , so he wanted ME to order steak tips , and he 'd just pick them off my plate . Which he did with fervor when the food arrived . Finally , I dropped him off , and laughed the whole way home about what a comedy of horrors had occurred . He called just yesterday looking to take me out again . . . I didn 't pick up the phone . - - Stacey After the " drought " - - a time during which I decided not to play the field - - I agreed rather reluctantly to let two work friends of mine , Mary and Sean , set me up with Sean 's roommate . The only thing I knew about him was that he was 5 ' 11 " , and I 'm 6 ' 1 " - - that didn 't make me too happy , but hey . For the man of my dreams we could work around it . One fateful Sunday , I answered the phone only to find Mary saying , " Enough of your foolishness . This is Tony , now talk . " After a bit of awkwardness , something of a conversation emerged . Tony seemed a bit unrefined , but a genuinely nice guy . When he asked me how old I was , I replied truthfully that I was 18 . When I asked him , he said he was between 22 and 30 . Um , OK . He claimed to be a semi - tall Italian type , with a slightly receding hairline , although not quite as receding as , say , Nicolas Cage . I agreed to meet him out ( mostly to stop the harassment from my friends ) a couple days later . His car was in the shop , so I had to pick him up ( in hindsight , this was a good thing ) . As I drove to his house on the night of our date , I had visions of a 5 ' 11 Nic Cage - - not bad . I spotted Sean outside and he waved me over to their apartment , which was in the middle of the " hood . " We went inside and there was Tony , dressed to the nines ( or so he thought ) in thick gold chains and clothes that only look good worn by Will Smith in ' Men In Black ' . Then I noticed his rather large bald spot ( he must be closer to the 30 end of the age range he gave me ) . He wasn 't exactly 5 ' 11 either , more like 5 ' 9 in platform sneakers . We left his apartment and got on the road . Rather abruptly , he told me to turn . Somewhat surprised I found myself in the parking lot of a sports bar . Inside , we talked a bit before he ordered the special , meat loaf , for the both of us . We ate in silence , except for the sound of Tony shoveling food in his mouth . He literally bent his head over his plate , giving me a full frontal bald spot view , and shoved the food in his mouth . After complaining about everything from the food , tPosted by Back in college , I met this guy who had gone to high school with one of my friends at a party . We spent a lot of time together talking that night and hit it off pretty well - - he seemed nice , smart and together . After going out on several dates , I respected the fact that he had never once tried to kiss me or even hold my hand , but a little alarm went off in my mind . One night , we were talking on the phone and told me about the guy at the CD store who had flirted with him earlier that day . At first , I didn 't see anything wrong with that ; he 's an attractive guy . But , then he proceeded to tell me that this sort of thing happened all the time . I started to get a bit suspicious . Then he asked me , " When you first met me , did you think I was gay ? " a Of course , I didn 't think he was gay ! Why would I have agreed to go out with him in the first place ? Then he tells me that he 's been trying to figure out whether or not he 's gay and that I had been a test for him . I was in such shock that I avoided his phone calls for months . As a matter of fact , I never talked to him again . I know it 's not the most mature thing to do , but I felt used and a bit hurt . Dating me helps a guy figure out that he doesn 't like women ? My friend who introduced us lived across the hall from me and when I asked her about it , her response was that she 'd been wondering for years if he was gay . It took me a while to talk to her again , too . Turns out his little experiment worked . The guy now exclusively dates men . - - Name Withheld He was the quintessential American guy : tent , truck , dog and a beer . Traveling through the Rockies alone , I couldn 't do anything but appreciate it when he drove up with those unbelievable blue eyes , parked in the campsite next to mine and offered an evening of fire - roasted corn , stars and a cold Sierra Nevada . When morning came , we hiked to a series of hot springs with his little white mutt prancing up and down the trail , ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches , and skinny - dipped . For the next three days we knocked around the wilderness playing . Alas , we had to get back into town and headed toward Salt Lake City . The drive was interrupted every 50 minutes to " let Max stretch his legs . " We could only stop at McDonalds for lunch and dinner because " Max " liked Quarter Pounders better than Whoppers or Wendy 's , never mind I detest McDonald 's almost as much as I detest mayonnaise . Oh , Max , of course , is the dog . After making a 6 - hour drive a 12 - hour ordeal , we finally found ourselves smuggling Max into a Best Western . When the dog decided he would get my bed and started pushing and nipping , I 'd had enough and picked the dog up and tossed him into the bathroom . At which point , American blue eyes howled and demanded to know what was wrong with me . " I 'm sorry , but I can 't hang with you any more . . . this is over . . . you 're jealous of my dog ! " So , at four am , I found myself packing up , getting my own room and vowing to supply my own fire roasted corn and beer in the future . I guess psychos can lurk behind blue eyes . - - Emily I 've had plenty of my own dating disasters , but I think I caused the best one after I got engaged . It was my bachelorette party , and I was out with a bunch of friends . As is the way with such things we proceeded to get pretty hammered and I was tackling a long list of " tasks " I 'd been assigned for the evening . I 'd already tackled the easy things such as getting a kiss from our waiter , getting some guy to hand over his underwear , and getting someone at the bar to sing " here comes the bride . " Now it was on to the tough stuff . I had a handful of things to do that needed a willing male participant . We saw two guys standing next to each other and the lot of us approached them . They 're psyched to see all these women and start joking around with us . Then two women walk over , scowl at us , and the guys snap to attention - - turns out they 're with these two . The guys go back to talking to their dates , and we walked away . A little bit later one of the guys comes over and talks to us some more . " I 'm sorry we made you get in a fight with your girlfriend , " I said . " Oh , she 's not a girlfriend . It 's a first date , " he answers . " It 's also our last . " Right then , his date walks over and says , " If you even care , I 'm going to the bathroom . " The moment she 's gone he announces he 's willing to be the guinea pig for some of the tasks . He volunteered for the tough job of using his navel as a holder for a body shot . Two of my girlfriends support him as he leans backwards , another friend pours some tequila into his belly button and I lap it up . It is , of course , at exactly this point that our hero 's woman comes back from the ladies room . He jumps up and starts wiping alcohol off his bare stomach . He looked like someone who 'd been caught in the act of cheating - - which , ok , he kind of was - - and stammers what was clearly the first thing he could think of : " Where 've you been ? I 've been looking for you everywhere ! " Yeah , " everywhere , " like the ceiling his eyes focused on as he lay back for a body shot . " I told you I was going to the bathroom ! " she saiPosted by I had just moved to Brooklyn when a friend set me up on a blind date . I scheduled a date with this guy , but he canceled on me because he sprained his ankle . Once it was healed he called and we set up an afternoon to meet . He drove over to my house , and said that since he was doing rehab on his ankle , he wanted to strengthen it up , and he 'd like to walk into Manhattan . Now it 's a good long walk over the bridge into Manhattan from my house , but it was a nice day , so I figured what the hell . We start walking and he asks me where we 're going to go for dinner . I say that I hadn 't really thought about it , but we could just stop and find a place when we got hungry . Conversation stopped . In a dramatic movement that would have been accompanied by a trumpet fanfare in the movies , he swings his head up to the heavens and says to the sky : " Has trouble making plans . Disorganized . Negative points . " I couldn 't believe he 'd just said this and I couldn 't tell if he was serious or joking or what . For all I know the guy has Tourette Syndrome , right ? So I ignore it and keep talking . A little later I comment on the weather and say , " Wow , it 's sure hot as hell out here . " Ok maybe I cursed slightly more . Again , he swings his head up to the sky and says : " Inappropriate use of the English language . Unnecessary swearing . Negative points . " Now , I 'm beginning to think he 's a bit freaky . Over dinner ( yes , I managed to be organized enough to get us to a restaurant ) it happens again . I turned down his suggestion of ordering a bottle of red wine , and ordered a beer instead . He looked up at the restaurant ceiling : " Doesn 't drink wine . Negative points . " " What are you doing ? " I asked . " I mean are you trying to joke , or are you being serious or what ? ? Because if you 're serious I 'm just going to leave right now . " We ended up getting in a huge argument , and in the cab ride home he commented that the evening hadn 't quite gone as planned and perhaps we should just shake hands and go our separate ways . I agreed and we rode in silence for a while . " ExcepPosted by OK , so last summer I was kind of having a dry spell . I hadn 't been on a date in quite a while and always the good friend that she is , when a college friend of Jessica 's mentioned that he needed a date to his annual summer office party , she volunteered me . I had once seen a picture of him in one of those silly sorority collages of hers and said he was cute . All hail to Jessica for remembering . So the next thing I know I 'm on the phone making plans with Jake the Dream Date . In his company 's attempt to be culturally neutral , their big annual bash takes place in the summer rather than during the " year end holiday season " ( or whatever ) . That year they rented a big awesome party boat that was going to take us on an all night dinner and dancing floating fiesta . It sounded fun and out of the ordinary . It sounded like it had romantic potential . I was psyched . The party was on a Friday night , and cruise was to leave the port promptly at 8 : 00 p . m . Jake the Dream Date said he 'd pick me up at my office around 6 : 30 so that we could have a drink before hand and then head to the docks . At about 4 : 30 he called from somewhere so loud I could barely make out what he was saying . " KYLIE , " yelled a male voice . " Um , yeah ? " I answered , shielding the receiver from the guy in the next cube . " THIS IS JAKE . I WENT OUT WITH THE GUYS AFTER WORK . " " Doesn 't after work usually start around 5 : 00 or so ? " " KYLIE , CAN YOU COME AND PICK ME UP ? I ' VE HAD A COUPLE BEERS . " Mind you that I 'm giving the condensed version of the conversation here . The real conversation used up a whole lot more " Huh ? " s . To make our long conversation short , I 'm a work , he 's drunk and a half a city away , and no I can 't come and pick him up . We finally decided that I would meet Jake the Dream Date at the docks at 7 : 30 so we 'd be on time to make the cruise . When I got to the pier I waited and waited and saw no sign of Jake the Dream Date . I started thinking . . . were we supposed to meet on the boat ? At our table ? On the dock ? Where the heck had we decided to meet ? I had been ruPosted by This guy that I actually liked called me up one afternoon and invited me to go out with him to a coffee house and then a nightclub after . I got all excited and rushed around looking for something good to wear and went to meet him . We spent the early evening drinking coffee and chatting with the various other people in the coffee house who he knew already because this place was his regular hangout . A girl was sitting on the other side of the room and he threw a little rubber band at her to get her attention . She smiled and giggled and came over and joined us . The three of us were talking for a good while and he invited her to come out to the nightclub with us . She said yes but went home to change and would meet us again in an hour or so . After she left I asked him how long he 'd known her , and he said he didn 't know her at all . . . just met her just then . Hmm . He 's a friendly guy , isn 't he ? Well , the three of us went out to the club where she and I sat ourselves down on barstools . He proceeded to spend the rest of the evening groping her on the barstool right next to me . I probably should have got up and moved , but hey . . . I sat there first . So instead of politely excusing myself , I called strangers over and told them my story so they could witness it as it was going on . I pretty much figured by this time that I was no longer on a date and had written this guy off in my mind . But just before the club closed he somehow ditched the other girl and as we were both exiting the building , he motioned to me as if I was supposed to be going home with him . I told him there 's no way in hell I 'd go home with him after that and he gave me the big sad puppy dog eyes and acted as if he honestly didn 't know what he had done to make me so angry with him . I went home without looking back . I 'd like to say the story ended here . But it doesn 't . He spent the next two weeks turning up everywhere I went and looking at me with the sad eyes until I actually felt sorry enough for him I agreed to go out with him again ( Yes , I know , I know . Posted by I had been corresponding with a guy on the West Coast for about five months before I finally made the trip to meet him . The initial pen friendship was incredibly great for the ego . He was charming , witty and seemed to be the type of guy that I couldn 't seem to meet in my own city . The fact that he was a friend of a close girlfriend made it all seem safer . But there were some hard spots that we hit . First , he mentioned that he was being stalked by an ex - girlfriend who also happened to be one of his employees . It got very dramatic - - she would follow him around town , he would confide in me how upset he was about their relationship , the situation would be resolved , and he would profess his affections for me . Then he became hot and cold and I declared the ultimatum : make up your mind or let 's forget about this . He finally convinced me to book a flight to go and see him so that we could decide whether a " real " relationship could take place away from the phone and the computer . Such a foolish , foolish girl that I was . Of course , what he never did reveal in complete honesty to me was the fact that he was courting another women who lived in his town . On what was supposed to be one of our Friday nights together with his friends , he brought along this young girl - - never once properly telling me that we were both " rivals " for his attentions . When I forced the issue , he sheepishly admitted that this other woman was someone whom he had " short - listed " as someone for dating purposes . So what the hell was I ? The pinch - hitter ? As I got to know him during my visit , I took relief in knowing that there were too many things that this guy never told me . At least I got to find out now before it was too late . He never told me that he had this gorgeous Belgium Shepherd dog that he never properly walked during the day - - poor thing was caged in the backyard all the time . He never told me that he wore brilliant white knee socks with sandals and shorts . He never told me that he liked to laugh and clap his hands like a trained seal during publicPosted by This happened to me when I was in college , and to be honest I don 't come out looking all that well in it . . . This guy Rob had asked me out and I said yes , even though I knew I didn 't want to . On the night we were supposed to go out , I didn 't exactly take the high road - - I couldn 't bring myself to go out with him , but I couldn 't tell him that either . So instead I hid . I didn 't answer the phone all day and I stayed out of my dorm room . I hung out upstairs with my friend Nicole . Sure enough , that evening he comes over to my dorm and starts asking everyone where I am . He knocked on my dorm room door and my roommate said she ( truthfully ) didn 't know . But someone else in the hall decided to tell him I might be up at Nicole 's . He knocked on her door . It was a small room and there was nowhere to hide , so I jumped up and stood behind the door as she opened it . " Do you know where Jane is ? " Rob asked . Nicole said she didn 't , maybe I was down the hall . But apparently he was no dummy : he pushed past her and looked behind the door to see me smooshed up against the wall trying to disappear . The jig was up and I felt awful . But he just said : " Oh ! There you are ! Are you ready ? " I said yes , told him I had to grab my purse , and went out on the date . He acted as if nothing was weird at all . Guys just don 't pick up on even the most obvious of signals do they ? ? - Jane It was my senior year of college and I had met this guy ( I can 't remember his name , let 's call him Chris ) at a party where I think I was probably drunk . Chris was probably drunk , too , as this was college , but he managed to remember my phone number and ask me out . We went to the movies . I remember thinking that he was a little cheap because he didn 't ask me if I wanted any popcorn or soda when we got into the theater . But I guess that 's neither here nor there , given the rest of the story . The movie went fine , but when we left the theater , the windows on his car were all frozen over . February in State College , PA , can be quite cold . So he proceeds to get out some sort of spray which is supposed to eliminate the ice build - up , but he sprays it on the INSIDE of the car windows . I ask him , PLEAD with him , to spray the OUTSIDE of the windows , but he insists that his way is correct . Well , we get in the car and he CRANKS up the heat , because it is cold , and because he is trying to defrost the windows so he can see . He drives half of the way back without being really able to see ( luckily , I survived ) , and I am choking from the fumes created by the spray he put on the inside of the windows . When we get to my place , I 'm not self - confident enough to know that I can leave him in the car and go inside , so I invite him in . As soon as we get into my apartment , the cheap bastard asks if I have any microwave popcorn , and so I make him some . He eats like a regular caveman and soon there are little pieces of popcorn all over his face , his clothes , and my carpet . Eewwww . He hangs around to watch TV and totally overstays his welcome . When he goes to the bathroom , I decide to send him a signal that it 's time to leave by lying on the couch and pretending to be asleep . This is no problem for him when he returns , as he sits on the floor in front of the couch , right in front of my head , with his back resting against the couch . He talks to me and I pretend to be really sleepy . That 's when it happened . He turned around , looked up at me , and sPosted by Here is my dating disaster , or more like the date from hell . I went out for the first time in a couple of years since I got divorced . My date didn 't say much , but he sure had touching down to an art . I asked him to keep his hands to himself until we knew each other better , but he took it badly . He told me I was from the stone ages because I wouldn 't let him touch me as much as he wanted to . He then came back by telling me I talked too much and laughed too much . I always thought a first date was for getting to know one another and talk was , you know , necessary . Obviously , Mr . Octopus didn 't agree . We weren 't made for each other , but I figured I 'd make it through the date and never talk to him again . No such luck - - half way through dinner , he went to the bathroom and never came back . Now , I am a little rough around the edges when it comes to dating , but I 've got to think that wasn 't exactly polite . . . - - Name Withheld I wasn 't going to go to my senior prom . But then , a few weeks before the prom , I started dating Tom ( a / k / a " Tom the Prom Date " ) . Tom seemed really nice at first and I had a lot of fun with him , so I decided to ask him to the prom . Unfortunately , in the ensuing weeks , my feelings for Tom grew less and less amorous and more and more nauseous . But I was committed to going with him ( i . e . , I had already paid for the tickets ) , so go I would . I should have had an idea of the night to come when Tom asked me for a swatch from my dress so he could match his bow tie and cummerbund . I told him that I did not want to be Geranimals at the prom , but he insisted . Unfortunately , I had bought an ugly electric blue dress ( hey - - it was the eighties ! ) , so he had an ugly electric blue bow tie and cummerbund . As the day of the prom approached , I was less and less excited about going . Then - it all started . It 's about 3pm on the day of the prom and I get a call from Tom that goes something like this : Me : Hello ? Him : [ My name here ] ? It 's Tom . I 'm at the hospital . Me : What are you doing at the hospital ? Him : I went through a plate glass door at school today and I have a mild concussion and I 'm getting 9 stitches in my forehead . Well , because I am a bad person , I was not worried about Tom , nor saddened by his calamity . I was overcome with joy - - here was my out ! I didn 't have to go to the prom with Tom the Prom Date anymore ! More conversation : Me : Oh , gee , that 's too bad . I guess you won 't be able to go to the prom tonight , then . . . Him : No ! Of COURSE I 'm going to go ! I wouldn 't miss it for the world ! I may be a little late picking you up , though . And , because I can 't drive , my parents are going to drive us . That 's OK , right ? Me : Oh , no , Tom . You 're hurt . You need your rest . I totally understand . You should really stay home tonight . Him : No , I told you I was going to take you to your prom and that 's what I 'm going to do . Oh - - I 've gotta go - - they 're ready to put the stitches in - - I 'll call you later . And so it begins . Tom shows up , with his parentPosted by A guy who worked in the same building I did asked me out . He was attractive , smart , seemed like an all - around good guy . Our first date went fairly well and at the end of the date we made plans for a second date . I liked him and was looking forward to seeing him again . We talked once over the phone that week , and then he called the day of the date to finalize plans . Five minutes into the conversation , he said : " Look , am I going to get lucky tonight ? " " Excuse me ? " I answered . " I mean I like you and all , but if we 're not going to have sex tonight we may as well forget it , because if I was just going to go to a movie I 'd rather do it with a guy . " He really said this . Out loud . I mean it 's one thing to think it . . . even weirder , he was genuinely surprised when I told him to just go out with his friends . - - Helen I am a 23 - year - old professional women who had just gone through a rather difficult breakup with a boyfriend when a group of friends from the office found ourselves at a local bar for happy hour . Our waiter was rather cute and very charming and even sat down to chat while we were there . Feeling particularly daring ( and realizing I had nothing to lose ) , I left my business card for the waiter with the check . Sure enough a few days later , he e - mailed me and asked if I wanted to go out sometime . I accepted . He said he wanted to make me dinner at his apartment and I thought that sounded wonderful . The evening of the big date arrived and I swiped a bottle of wine from an office happy hour to take along to dinner . I arrived at the building and called up to have him let me in . When we entered the foyer , I noticed it was garishly decorated with lots of construction paper and posters . Then one caught my eye which read " Resident Advisor Apartment " I asked my date if he lived in a dorm and he replied that he did - - but it was more like university - provided off - campus housing . " Wait , " I said , " How old are you anyway ? " " I 'm 20 , " he replied , " But I 'll be 21 in less than two months ! " Not knowing exactly what to do , I followed him upstairs to his apartment and found out he lived in a four - person , two - bedroom apartment . The lights were dimmed and there were lit candles on the table which was romantically set . . . for three . He then introduced me to his roommate and informed me he would be joining us for dinner , which consisted of that old college staple - - spaghetti with pieces of chicken in it which he called " Chicken Cacciatore . " After about an hour and a lot of wine ( good thing I brought the wine since I was the only one in the room old enough to obtain it ) , the other two roommates arrived home , trailing along with them about six female co - eds , all wearing backpacks . They began to unload the beer cans from their backpacks and the conversation turned to how lucky they were to sneak in all that beer without the RA catching them . Stunned Posted by |
Finally , I was on my way to find my friend who saved my life by leading me to Christ as a young lad . Of course , he had helped me in more ways , as well . It was from him that I had learned about defending myself and others . He helped me to stay out of harm 's way . I owed the man more than I could ever repay . We had lost touch after my family left my hometown eleven years earlier ; I had never forgotten him . I had a very strong feeling that now he needed me . By the way , my name is Zebulon O ' Hanlon , and back then , in 1967 , I was a 22 year old Vietnam veteran , newly returned from the war . People would most likely have described me as an Irisher with flaming red hair and a curiosity about people that would have put a cat under the stove , hiding in shame , cause I would have outdone it in my inquisitiveness . Anyhow , there I was on a bus headed south from my old hometown in Pennsylvania . Oh , yeah , people called me Zeb , among other things . Looking around me , across the aisle , I noticed a kid sitting beside what was obviously his Ma . He looked to be about five and he was kicking the seat in front of him . Apparently he had nothing to keep him occupied and he was bored to the point that he was reaching out for attention . His mother had a magazine , apparently tuning him out , and pretty soon , something was bound to happen . I watched silently , waiting to see what would take place . It didn 't take long . An old man , in the seat whose back was receiving the punishment , stood up and turned around . Looking over the back of the seat , he said , " Madam ! Would you kindly control the actions of your unruly brat ! " She looked up , surprised at the outburst , and then apologized to the senior . " I 'm so sorry , sir ! I didn 't realize he was bothering anyone . We had to leave in a hurry , and I forgot to bring any toys with me . " " Humph ! Well , keep his feet off my seat back , if you will , please ! " So saying , he sat back down again , after giving one last glare at the little boy . I decided to see if I could perhaps help her . " Ma ' am . There is an empty seat next to me . Could I perhaps entertain your son for a while ? Maybe he would like to talk to me , as I have nothing to do right now , except think . . . " " Well . . . I don 't know . . . " She looked at closely , as if trying to decide my trustworthiness , then looked back at the magazine she was reading . " Well , I guess it wouldn 't hurt anything . . . Billy , would you like to sit over there a while and talk to the nice man ? Sir , what is your name ? " " Zeb O ' Hanlon , ma ' am . " Billy looked me over , much more closely than his mother had , and decided that it might be fun to talk to me . After all , it had to be more fun than watching his mother read her magazine . Her quick agreement to let him sit with a total stranger , did not seem to say much for her caring for him . I wondered what kind of treatment he got at home . Smiling at his frank curiosity , I replied that was the color God chose to make it when He made me . " Oh ! Well , I know about him . He belongs to my Mom ! " " Really ? Why do you say that ? " " Well , every time she gets mad , she says , ' Oh , my god ' . So I figure he must belong to her . " " I dunno where we 're goin ' , I never do . We jist up and leave , mostly when my Mom gets a call , or somebody starts bangin ' on the door . Sometimes I don 't even get a chance to get dressed , cause it 's usually in the night time . Right now , I 'm hungry . You got any food on ya , mister ? " She gazed longingly at the sandwich . " Well , I 'd better not . After all , it might be all you have to eat and I wouldn 't want to rob you . " a few more minutes , Billy settled down next to me and was soon sleeping . As he slept , I thought about all the things he had told me , without realizing what he was revealing . I munched on the apple , and before I knew it , I was dozing as well . After the excitement of yesterday , I was more tired than I realized . The humming of the tires of the bus and the sound of the motor seemed to invite sleep . I must have slept for several hours , because when I awakened , Billy and his mother were gone . I wondered about them , and where they might have gone . Would they ever stop running ? I knew that is what they were doing . It didn 't take a genius to figure that one out ; I certainly knew I didn 't qualify as one . was a Red Book Magazine , filled with articles about beauty and holding on to your man . There was also some fiction , along with questions and answers from Margaret Mead . I spent a while flipping through it , then tossed it back over to the seat where she had left it . Another couple of hours and it was my stop . The driver stopped the bus , and several people got off along with me . He got our suitcases out of the carrier under the bus , and placed them on the sidewalk . I thanked him for the good ride , and he said , " Just part of the job . " and smiled at me . up my duffel bag , I looked around at the drug store where he stopped . It looked like it had a sandwich bar , but I decided to stretch my legs before eating anything . I went into the drug store for directions , though . Actually , the drug store , I glanced around . I noticed not very many people were in here . Only a couple of the passengers and the bus driver . He had used the facilities , bought a cup of coffee and was getting ready to go . Apparently , this was a regular rest stop along the way for buses . It seemed a pleasant enough place , I remember thinking . again , the driver nodded to me , then left to get back on his bus . I watched through the glass front of the store as it pulled away . I heard the hiss of the diesel and saw the smoke belching from the exhaust . I there was a news writeup about problems with integration of the local schools . It seemed that on the whole , it was going fairly smoothly , but there were some who were still objecting to the procedure . On both sides really caught my eye . . . they were looking for trainees to become policemen . Now , that was what had been on my mind for some time . I sat back and thought about what that could be like . . . would need references , of course , but first I had to apply . Then I remembered I was here to find my friend . First things first , I told myself . I had to stay focused . Pulling out my wallet , from the inner pocket of my coat , I opened it to look at the address once again on the scrap of paper they had given me at the station . I started to get up to walk over and ask for directions , when suddenly , I noticed something . My wallet no longer felt thick with the three hundred dollars I had hidden inside it . It was gone ! What ? ? How ? ? I began searching through my coat , my pants pockets , my jacket pockets . It wasn 't there ! I had no money except for the pocket change in Had he lifted my cash while I was asleep ? Surely not . . . I simply couldn 't believe it , I would not believe he could have done such a thing . No , it had to be someone else . As I thought back over the events of the day , I remembered the fellow who had accidentally bumped into me before I got on the bus . Perhaps it was he who had stolen my money . I remembered he had seemingly brushed off my was growing up my Grandda had told me about how people would pull that very trick at the county fairs . I had simply forgotten about it until now . Well , regardless , there I was with no money in a strange town and no job prospects and no place to spend the night . But first , I needed to find my friend , Sergeant Finley . I looked at the address , and taking it over to the clerk , I asked him for directions . He took the scrap of paper and looked at it closely . " Hmmm . This is over in a section of town you might want to avoid . " riff - raff live in that part of town . You 're a nice , clean - cut looking fellow , and I don 't think you 'd fit in over there . If your friend is living over there and not in trouble , he is likely really down on his luck . I 'd stay away from there , young feller ! " okay . . . just don 't say I didn 't warn ya . Ya go down main street as far as it goes and then cross the railroad tracks when you come to ' em and just keep walking . Then ask anybody you see about this here address . They 'll maybe point ya in the right direction , but hold onto your money when you go over there , cause you 'll no doubt get robbed first thing anybody gets a chance . " nothing much , " I replied . " Maybe , some day I will explain it to you . However , don 't worry about me losing my money . That won 't happen , I can assure you . Thank you so very much for helping me , sir . I appreciate it . " So saying , I picked up my duffel bag , and slung it over my shoulder , and left the drug store , whistling . I knew that God would be safeguarding me . He apparently had a day was cold , although the sun was shining brightly , and I pulled my coat closer about me as I walked . I realized I really needed a haircut , because my red curls were creeping out from under my Yankee 's cap . My hair was the bane of my existence and kept me from being as anonymous as I continued my walk across the town of Bankton , I noticed a real friendliness of people passing me . They would nod to me , and smile as though they already knew me . I had been too long in Vietnam . They also cast curious glances in my direction , as though wondering what was my destination . This was , after all , a small town in Tennessee , and where people were always said to be friendly . At least , that is what I had always heard . I neared the end of North Main , I saw the railroad tracks to my right . North Main curved and became South Main , with the railroad crossing at the division . Hmmm . Interesting , I thought . A division of the North and the South ? Were they still fighting a civil war ? Perhaps . the tracks , I noticed the difference immediately . Factories occupied a large area of the south side . There were also " company houses " , apparently belonging to the factories and occupied by the factory workers . I discovered later that the workers had to pay fairly high prices for the rent , keeping them in debt to the company . No wonder they walked along until I found some kids hanging around a grocery store . One of them had a boom box radio and they were playing it loud . It was playing a song I was not familiar with , with a really loud rhythm . " Hey , boys ! Could you help me please ? I 'm looking for an address that I was told was around here somewhere . " row of houses burnt up . We think maybe the fire was set a purpose , on account of us bein ' black and all . Lots a people don 't like us . " yeah , they would , since we started integratin ' inta the schools a few years ago . They don 't want us gettin ' no educatin ' like they get . Tryin ' yeah , but I live farther on down in the white section . Jimmy Joe here is one of my friends . We been friends for a long time , since my dad works at one of the factories over here . " The first boy who spoke to me replied . " Jimmy Joe , do either of you know a man named Jackson Finley ? He is the one I am searching for . " " What happened to him ? Where did he go ? " " It was actually his house that caught on fire first , they said , and then it spread to the others . " why ? Does that mean that someone was trying to burn him out ? Why would they do that ? And he was white . Why was he living in colored housing ? No " What was ? I don 't get it ? " " He was a white man , married to a black woman . That jist don 't go down so good , here in the south . " " Ah . . . well , what happened to him ? Where did they go ? Can you tell me that ? " uh , we don 't know where he is , Mister . He got burnt pretty bad tryin ' to get his missus out . She was dead , I think , and they took him away . " " Maybe the ambulance . " " Where is the nearest hospital ? Where would they have taken him ? " I was beside myself with worry , hoping to find him still alive . Knowing I had to check first at the hospital , I asked the boys about the location of the closest one . " It 's and go north two blocks , then turn left onto Central Boulevard . Go eight blocks and it will be on your right . You can 't miss it . I hope you Apparently , she understood my predicament and pointed to a nearby water fountain . Hurrying over to it , I bent over and got a huge draught of the water . Oh , my ! It tasted wonderful ! Soon I was back at the desk , thanking her and asking about Jackson Finley . " A burn victim , you say ? How long ago was that ? " " I 'm not sure , a few weeks maybe . . . " ah . . he probably was taken to the other hospital across town . You will need to check over there . We don 't take indigent patients into the hospital . I 'm sorry . " bus stop out front . They pass right by this facility . The driver will tell you where to get off the bus . " " Thank you , ma ' am . I appreciate your help . " " You 're welcome . I 'm sorry about your friend . I hope you find him . " Nodding to her , I left the hospital , feeling a bit discouraged . This was turning out to be more difficult than I had ever As knew no one to speak of , and that I had no job to earn money , hit me squarely in the face . I was one of the many homeless . Now what was I to do , where was I to go ? Not only was I without funds , I was beginning to be hungry , as well as needing bathroom facilities . sign that said " Men 's " and entering the restroom , made use of it . Upon reentering the lobby once again , I saw the receptionist was putting on her coat in preparation for leaving for the day . I decided to push my luck and ask for help in finding a place to stay temporarily . give you , and ask the man who answers the door if you can work at cleaning his building for him . Tell him I sent you . I am writing a note to him and signing it . The place is located six blocks from here . Turn right when you leave this hospital and just keep going for three blocks . was beginning to get dark , and here I was , once again , on my way somewhere , destination practically unknown . How did I even know I could actually trust the elderly lady ? I simply had to take it on faith . When I turned to walk the final three blocks , I was going uphill . It was a hill I would later learn was called Jaybird Hill . At the top , lighting the sky was a sign that said , " Wayfarer 's MIssion . " It was a mission for certainly looked welcoming to me . It looked like people were lining up outside to go in for the night , so I took a place in line , forgetting about the note in my pocket . Looking around , I noticed that people of all ages were there . Many of them looked like they were in their early twenties , perhaps veterans like myself . I noticed a teenage boy , all alone , and I smiled at him . He just I would discover he was a runaway , named Joe . Unbeknownst to both of us , he would become important in the lives of many people . Isn 't it funny , not ha ha , how God can take us and use us for His glory , when we least expect it ? Little Joe would wind up leading people to the Lord , and helping them in more ways than he ever dreamed . Right now , Joe , like the doors opened and we were allowed to come inside . Then I remembered the note in my pocket , and looked around for someone in charge . I saw an hello , young man . You don 't quite look like you belong here . You 're clean , look well fed ; but I see you 're carrying your suitcase . Let 's see his glasses , he lifted his eyebrows and peered at the note . Then he smiled at me as he refolded it , and put it into his pocket . " Need work , eh ? Miss Sarah is always sending people to me in need . She knows that is my line of business , taking care of those in need . Let me introduce myself , Zebulon ; my name is Andrew Black , but people called me Pastor Andy . I pastor here at the mission . I can 't pay you anything , but I may be able to offer you a room in back in return for helping me here , and also three meals a day . Now tell me how you wound up here . " would not believe how many times I have heard the same kind of story from runaways . It is to your mother 's credit that she kept you all together and raised you well , with the help of your grandfather . She is to be commended . " He smiled at me . sir , just that he had been living on the south side with his wife in one of those company houses . He may have been working at one of the factories . I don 't know . The boys I talked to said they thought the fire those sleeping here at night were turned out the next morning to fend for themselves until the evening meals . Funding was too low to provide more for them . I removed a toboggan from my duffel bag and left my Yankee 's cap in it 's place . We realized my story must have touched him deeply in order for him to trust me so much . In fact , I felt he could be testing me to see if I lived up to his trust . I would not let him down , I knew . Entering the large room that was filled with tables and chairs , I saw that the serving line had moved quite a bit , but was still near the doorway to the outside . Once again , I spotted the boy named Joe and he was looking as though he was headed for trouble . He seemed to be antagonizing another , older homeless old man , who was standing in front of him . Pastor Andy went over to speak to Joe . " What 's the matter , Nardocci ? Why are you bothering Sam here ? " " He cut line ! Throw him out ! He 's always cutting in front of people . " Joe , you know he don 't understand . You 'll get your supper . You quit jumping all over him . Look , you 're about to get served . Pick up your tray and utensils now , and get your food . No more trouble , you hear ? Else you 'll get tossed out . It 's cold out there tonight . Be a good fellow , eh ? " Andy came back to me and confided that Sam had been turned out of a mental hospital . They are just emptying them out , Zeb . We have lots of war vets that have no place to go as well . churches in this area give what they can to help us out . We get a little from the state , but not much . We just kind of scrape along , the best that we can . I preach a sermon on Sunday , when we provide breakfast not even that old . From bruises that I saw when he first started showing up , I think he survived a lot of beatings . One of his arms is at kind of an odd angle . I think maybe it had been broken and healed crooked . If something doesn 't happen , he 'll become a real hoodlum . " there is quite a bit to be cleaned each day when the over - nighters leave . The sleeping area needs to be fumigated a bit , and beds need to be smoothed up a bit . Sweeping to be done is a need . Once in a while windows need to be cleaned . You know , just general cleaning . The ones who serve supper always wipe down the tables . Here , let 's get us some supper now . " questioning my own mission to find my friend . Why did God bring me to this place ? I seemed no nearer to Jackson Finley here than I had the day was awakened by a knock on the door at about 6 a . m . Looking out of the small window of the little room , I saw it was still dark . " Yes ? " I answered the knock . " Time to get up , lad . You can help me roust the sleepers and get them on their way . Many of them get out early to dumpster dive . Sometimes they can find food in various places . I wish we could afford to feed them , but that is quite impossible at this time . Maybe some day in the future . " to begin my search once again , I arose and dressed . The room was cold , and I shivered as I clothed myself . I quickly used the bathroom facilities of the small apartment . Then I joined Pastor Andy in the large sleeping area used by the homeless , and helped him to awaken the sleepers and get them out of the building . I noticed that most of them had bags or some kind of containers to keep their meager belongings safe from others . I eventually learned that was the cause of many of the arguments among them . Charges of stealing were abundant . Those found guilty of stealing others ' possessions were not allowed to come back into the shelter . they were all out , we went about spraying fumigants in the sleeping area . Lice were plentiful , and there was no way to keep them out . The shelter had no room for showers for the homeless at that time . It was a pitiful way to exist and my heart went out to them . Following the fumigation and straightening of the cots , I swept the floors in the whole mission building . I wondered then about breakfast . Where did the pastor eat breakfast ? Going into Pastor Andy 's office , I asked him about breakfast . " I was just getting ready to take you to the kitchen . We can fix us up some breakfast in there . Are you any good at cooking ? " town in Kentucky where our grandparents lived on a farm . Then told him that most of them were still living there . I shared with him some more of my years in Vietnam . this time we had just about finished eating our breakfast , and I inquired about the location of the hospital I wanted to go to . It was the next step in finding my friend . " Do you have any money , young man ? " " Well , don 't I take you to the hospital so you can check on your friend , then you can see if you 're on the right track . I have an old jalopy and I 'll take you . " " Oh , you are too kind ! Thank you , so very much ! " Zeb , you are the first I have needed . You see , my doctor advised me that I should get someone in to help me . I 'm sure that he was just looking out for me . My health is beginning to decline . Sometimes I have heavy boxes to lift and move around , when supplies come in . They are usually delivered early in the mornings on the weekends . Miss Sarah knew " Hmmm . So you and Miss Sarah are good friends , I gather . Some romance going here ? " I teased good - naturedly . He looked at me , as if trying to gauge my seriousness . When he saw the grin on my face , he broke into a chuckle . " No , lad , nothing like that . We do go back a long way , but we are just good friends . It 's a long story , and perhaps one day , I 'll share it with you when we both have the time . high , and the two of us went immediately to the admissions desk . The receptionist greeted Pastor Andy warmly . Without a doubt , he was well - known there . " What can we do for you , Pastor ? Are you visiting a patient here ? " Finley , who was badly burned in a house fire a few weeks ago . Can you tell us if he was a patient here ? Perhaps he still might be ? " let me see ; well , he 's not here now . If he was and was discharged , you 'll need to go down to records to find that information . Records office is down this hall to your right . When you reach the end of that hall , turn right again . It will be on your left then . Good luck , young man ! Goodbye . Pastor Andy . " As we walked at a moderate pace down the hallway , I noticed Pastor Andy slowing down . I slowed down as well , watching him . He took a small vial from his pocket , removed a tiny pill from it , and placed it under his tongue . Why was he doing that , I wondered . " Is that medicine ? Are you feeling ill ? Do you need to rest ? " the desk , I picked up a chair and carried it out her office door . Immediately , she followed me shouting , " Stop , thief ! You can 't take that ! " she had followed me out into the hallway , she saw immediately my purpose in taking the chair . Rushing over to Pastor Andy , as I had him sit down , she knelt before him and felt his wrist . I could see she had some medical training , even though she was obviously some kind of secretary . Looking up at me , she said , " He needs to be in a hospital bed . His pulse is thready at best . " Turning to him , she said , " Don 't you go one step further ! I 'm calling the ER for someone to come with a wheelchair . You , mister , are not going anywhere except to see a doctor . " " Young man , you see he doesn 't move from that chair , you hear me ? ! ! " listen , Zeb , I don 't think there 's any need to get so alarmed ! I told you , I saw the doctor and he just told me that I got some trouble with my ticker , but it would most likely be okay if I didn 't overdo . I don 't reckon I 've overdone it today . Driving you over here didn 't take any effort . That gal don 't know what she 's talking about . I 'm just fine . We oughta go ahead and check out that information you 're looking for . " O ' Hanlon , ma ' am . I 'm helping him out at the Mission , and he was bringing me over to the office of records to look for a friend of mine . I was bending over Pastor Andy and taking his pulse again . Looking up at me , she shook her head in a negative manner . Now I was really concerned . hey , Pastor Andy , are you feeling a bit under the weather ? Let 's get you into this chair and down to ER . Easy , now , just let me do the work here . " " I don 't know why all this fuss is being made ! I tell you , I 'm just fine ! I don 't need this here wheelchair . " sorry , they are working with him right now . Maybe later , if he is allowed to have visitors . If you 'd care to wait , you may sit over there . " His heart was just too weak . We tried resuscitation and it just didn 't work . We have a new procedure where we can sometimes shock the heart into restarting . We tried that and it didn 't work either . I 'm so sorry for your loss . The nurse will be over to get any information you can give her . " and now , what was I to do ? I felt no sorrow on his part , I knew he was in Heaven now . I did feel sorrow in losing him as a friend . I had looked mission ! Would it stay open , now with him gone ? Who was going to operate it ? It was barely operational now , with Pastor Andy , but with him no longer there , would they close it down ? about all the people that would show up for supper this evening and to sleep there ? Who should I contact ? I had no numbers to call . Now what ? I She looked at me as though I were speaking a foreign language . " I thought perhaps you could tell me , young man ; you came here with him . I need a name to notify . " what about his billfold ? Perhaps he had some kind of information in that ? Could you go into the room and get it for me ? " I asked her . items fit into one of my large hands . There were a set of keys , a billfold , a pocket knife , some coins , and a St . Christopher 's Medal . Although I had seen several soldiers who carried the medal , I wondered at its significance , and the fact that Pastor Andy carried one . It was something for me to ponder . At the nurses ' desk , with all three of us in attendance , I opened the billfold , and found a few dollars , not much , and a phone number with a state of Tennessee heading . That apparently was who we needed to call first with news of Pastor Andy 's passing . There seemed he was well - prepared for his passing on . All the pertinent information that was necessary , was right there in one place . The nurse took the items and placed them all in a medium sized mailing envelope and said they would make the necessary phone calls . That seemed to be that , I thought . Many days later , I found myself continuing to think about Andy Brown and the people in the photos . I realized that we often have brief encounters with people who have a profound effect on our lives , without their realizing it . Heading down to the Records office once again , I hoped I would find some helpful information about my friend , Jackson Finley . After the time we got him there , I 'm sorry to say . He was a fine man , and I feel blessed to have known him , even for a brief time . I 'm sure the homeless ones who came to his shelter each night are going to miss him , too . " don 't know what we will do . Right now , I am one of the homeless , as well , with no money and no prospects . But I am sure God will direct my path , and will help me . Right now , I have to head to the Records department . Thank you for the help while ago ! " Shaking her hand , I turned and left the office , softly closing the door behind me . I approached the desk , I observed there seemed to be no one there , until I could see behind it . Squatting in front of a filing cabinet , an elderly lady was rifling through the lower drawer , seemingly searching for a file folder . She had apparently not heard the door open , or my approach to the desk . Clearing my throat , I said , " Ahem , Madam . " look what you caused me to do , young man ! Third time this week someone has startled me into such a position . I do declare ! Well , don 't just stand there ! Come around and help an old lady up , why don 't you ? " oh ! I hoped this didn 't bode ill for me in getting the information I wanted from her . You never want to upset the apple cart before you get the apples , you know . Rushing around to her , I gently helped her to her feet , profusely apologizing all the while . " Oh , that 's okay . No harm done , I reckon , young man . Now what can I do for you ? In here to pay a bill , maybe ? " stared at me with a gimlet glance and said , " Maybe I do , and maybe I don 't ? You have a right to know if I do ? Are you kin to him , by any chance ? Who are you ? " ma ' am , I am kin to him in a way . You see , Jackson Finley is my Christian brother and led me to Christ over a decade ago . My name is Zebulon O ' Hanlon , and we lived in the same town up in Pennsylvania . We both left there and I have been looking for him . Please , can you help me ? I believe he was a patient here several weeks ago . " let me look and see what I can find out then . You just get back around to the other side of the desk and I 'll do a quick search . By all the rules , you 're not really supposed to be on this side of the desk , you know . " let me see , you said his name was Jackson Finley ? Oh , goodness , these files are all out of order ! That new girl must have been messing around in them . These young whippersnappers don 't even know their ABC 's , it seems ! What is this world coming to , anyway ? " muttered on to herself as she flipped through the files , and I was beginning to wonder if she would find what we were searching for . She was soon removing a stack of files from the drawer and reorganizing them . After about twenty minutes , she put them back into the drawer , and then continued flipping through the next bunch . She seemed to be quite methodical in her search , but I was beginning to despair . However , it was amusing to watch her . Since I really had nowhere to be until I got my information , I just settled my elbows on the counter and continued observing . Bringing the folder over to the counter , she opened it and perused it quickly . " Now , young Mr . Zebulon , what is it you wish to know that I can tell you ? These records do belong to the hospital , you realize . " O ' Hanlon , ma ' am . I 'm trying to locate Jackson Finley . It is very important that I find him . He is an old friend of mine , and I feel an urgency to locate him . When I found out he had been injured in a fire , I realized he must be in real trouble . Can you tell me if anyone came to pick him up when he left , and who it was ? Was he able to take care of himself ? Did he check himself out , or did someone else ? " Let 's see . He was here for three weeks . He was an indigent patient and we kept him as long as we could . Next of kin is listed as a sister , but doesn 't give her name . It seems she came to pick him up . His condition was still listed as serious . That 's all we have . I 'm sorry . " about his doctor ? Can I have his name so I can talk to him ? Maybe he can tell me some more about him , or maybe his nurses can . Please ? " making my way to the emergency room , I decided to ask about Jackson Finley there . It stood to reason that since these nurses knew all the doctors , perhaps they would know which ones cared for my friend . As I headed for the desk , the nurse looked up and inquired if perhaps I was lost , going around in circles , since I had been in there not long before . Laughing , I soon remedied her perplexity . " No , ma ' am , I 'm searching for information . A friend of mine was brought in several weeks ago , with burns from a house fire , and I 'm trying to locate him . I 'm gathering all the information about him that I possibly can . I 'd like to talk to his doctor and his nurses . Perhaps he talked to are quite busy and work long hours . I don 't think so , young man . I am sorry . You 'll just have to go back to your editor and say it didn 't work . " aren 't you ? News Talk came by last week and we gave them the exclusive interview on our unit , and that was the only one we intend to give for the time being . " " But , ma ' am , I 'm not a reporter ! Please , I 'm searching for my friend , Jackson Finley . " " I have a young man out here looking for a friend who was one of your patients a few weeks ago . Yes . A Jackson Finley . You remember him ? Our visitor out here in Emergency would like to speak with any of Mr . Finley 's doctors or nurses . Can someone come out and speak to him for a few minutes ? Nurse Atkins can ? Thank you . " the wall . In about ten minutes , a diminutive young woman clad in whites came through the swinging doors , looking about , searching the room with her eyes . When I half - way stood up , she headed in my direction , a smile playing about her mouth . Once again , I explained about my search for him and why . " I owe him more than I can ever repay , and I feel he needs me right now , and I 'm doing all I can to find him . What can you tell me about his stay " How about if we go down to the cafeteria right now for a cup of coffee ? I could really use a fifteen minute break . " She smiled at me again , and it looking as mine . Hers was a rich chestnut shade . A little nurse 's cap sat perched atop her head . Turning her face up toward me , she began to inquire how long I had been in Bankton . " This is my second day here . " " Oh ? Do you have relatives here ? How did you come to our hospital to ask about Jackson ? Had you perhaps heard of our new Burn Unit ? " " No , ma ' am , no relatives . I just kind of followed my instincts , and asked people questions , until I found my way here . All I actually had to begin Watching her reactions to my story , I could see why she was such a good nurse . " You must find out from Nurse Grant in Emergency if she knows anything about the Mission , before you leave . Perhaps she can give you the number for the State Administration that was in Pastor Andy 's billfold . " a seat , Mr . O ' Hanlon , and I 'll get us a cup of coffee and a slice of Apple pie . No argument , now ! My treat ! Yours , next time . Okay ? " bowing my head to give thanks for the food and kindness of Nurse Atkins , I took a sip of the coffee , and a forkfull of the pie . Hmmmm , pure ambrosia , I thought . " Now , please tell me what you can about the Sergeant , " I pled , laying my fork on the plate . " He was a policeman when I knew him . He led me to Christ and helped me in many ways . Did he have any visitors while he was a patient ? " can you tell me about Jackson while he was in there ? Was he aware of where he was and why ? How badly burned was he ? Did you ever have any conversations with him ? " imagine , in a huge amount of pain . Our new unit is one that is largely experimental . We are trying procedures that are untried before now . We use glucose in intravenous form to restore lost nutrients to the body . We also have baths to help in the healing and forming of new skin . Since what else can you tell me about him while he was in here ? Did he say anything that might give me any clues about where he might go when he left ? Did his sister , Anne , come to pick him up ? Do you have a last name with me and we 'll look together . You know , I 've never met a person who was any more encouraging to others as your friend , Jackson , seemed to be . We have two other burn victims in our unit , and he was always telling them how much The Lord loved them . He told them each day , and although they seemed to have trouble believing it , they never told him to leave them be . " Tears filled my eyes . " That 's my friend , all right ! " I blinked away the tears . " I know he needs my help right now , and I must find him ! " we are , let me see now . " She flipped back a couple or three pages , scanning her fingers down the entries . " Ah , there it is ! " She turned the Stanton , " I read aloud . I deduced from the slant on the writing that she was most likely left - handed . I remembered that Jackson Finley was also left - handed . It must be a family trait , I thought . " Can you tell me anything more about Ms . Stanton ? Was she older or younger than Jackson ? Was she wearing wedding rings ? Did anyone ever come with her that you know of ? " Atkins looked at me in a surprised way , and said , " Yes , now that you mention it , I did notice that she had a wedding band on her hand when she signed the register . She seemed to be several years younger , but I can 't say for sure . I think I remember seeing a man join her at the door when you are able . I insist ! No arguments , Zeb O ' Hanlon ! We are supposed to help each other along the way in our lives . Please don 't rob you ! I won 't forget ! " Taking the money and the sheet of paper and pencil from her , I headed back out the doors of the Burn Unit and headed sorry , they said it will be sometime next week before they can get anyone out to open it back up again . I am to keep the keys until they can send someone to collect them . You don 't have a place to stay , do you ? Weren 't you staying there with Pastor Andy ? " headed for the phone booth that was attached to the wall and found the phone book . It looked a little worse for the wear , but I was sure I could find what I needed in it . It looked as though it had been thumbed through by a thousand fingers . Perhaps it had . The little shelf in the phone booth didn 't seem big enough to accommodate my search , but it would have to do . Quickly flipping through the residential listings , I found the Stanton 's listings . There were twenty - two of them , so that gave me a lot of writing to do . Forty minutes later , I had finished my task . ' What next ? ' I wondered . ' A map ! That 's it ! I need a city map , but where can I get one of those ? ' we are , let me see now . " She flipped back a couple or three pages , scanning her fingers down the entries . " Ah , there it is ! " She turned the Stanton , " I read aloud . I deduced from the slant on the writing that she was most likely left - handed . I remembered that Jackson Finley was also left - handed . It must be a family trait , I thought . " Can you tell me anything more about Ms . Stanton ? Was she older or younger than Jackson ? Was she wearing wedding rings ? Did anyone ever come with her that you know of ? " Atkins looked at me in a surprised way , and said , " Yes , now that you mention it , I did notice that she had a wedding band on her hand when she signed the register . She seemed to be several years younger , but I can 't say for sure . I think I remember seeing a man join her at the door when you are able . I insist ! No arguments , Zeb O ' Hanlon ! We are supposed to help each other along the way in our lives . Please don 't rob you ! I won 't forget ! " Taking the money and the sheet of paper and pencil from her , I headed back out the doors of the Burn Unit and headed sorry , they said it will be sometime next week before they can get anyone out to open it back up again . I am to keep the keys until they can send someone to collect them . You don 't have a place to stay , do you ? Weren 't you staying there with Pastor Andy ? " headed for the phone booth that was attached to the wall and found the phone book . It looked a little worse for the wear , but I was sure I could find what I needed in it . It looked as though it had been thumbed through by a thousand fingers . Perhaps it had . The little shelf in the phone booth didn 't seem big enough to accommodate my search , but it would have to do . Quickly flipping through the residential listings , I found the Stanton 's listings . There were twenty - two of them , so that gave me a lot of writing to do . Forty minutes later , I had finished my task . ' What next ? ' I wondered . ' A map ! That 's it ! I need a city map , but where can I get one of those ? ' " It 's just down the street about two blocks on your right . You can 't miss it . Good luck in your search for your friend , Zeb ! " was among those at that time with no place to lay my head , either . One difference was that I had a home and family in Kentucky that I could go back to . I didn 't know how many had hopes of Heaven , but I could sure share that hope with them , as I lived among them . " Yes , ma ' am , " I whispered in return . " I 'm looking for a map of Bankton . Would you happen to have one in here ? " with her to the circulation desk , I saw her flip open a large Atlas . I had not realized there was a national atlas of the cities of the United States , but there it was . She turned to a section near the back of the book , and there was Bankton . It shared the page with several other small we can do better than that , my young friend . Help me carry it to the machine in back and we will make a copy of that section . You will have to help me hold it in the proper position in order to get a facsimile of we reached the back stacks , I saw the large machine that was going to do the copying for me . I had never seen one before . Looking at it curiously , I asked the librarian about it . Noticing her name tag for the first time , I saw that her name was Olivia . " Miss Olivia , tell me about this huge machine . Have you had it very long ? How does it work ? " I have very little idea how it works . There is some kind of material inside that makes an image show up on the special paper we use . It 's kind of like a camera , I think . I just know it works , and right now , that is enough for me . I 've been trying to find out by reading the manual , but that is okay . We 've only had it for a few months . No doubt , in the years to come , it will be Little did we both realize that through the years , many changes would come about that would amaze people . After a couple of tries , we succeeded in making a suitable , usable copy of the map of Bankton . " Now , have some kind of story to tell me . Perhaps I can help you even more . You must be searching for something or someone , and I know a lot of people . I can sense you are a kind person and I want to help you . " So we sat down at one of the empty tables in the library and we talked . She was very good at drawing out information . After hearing my story , she leaned back in her chair to look at me . " I know the Finleys , " she whispered sadly . " They used to come in here all the time . I knew Jackson , Anne , Darby , all of them . Then Jackson fell in love with a young colored woman and the family 's objections to the union drove a wedge between him and them . He left with the girl , and went north somewhere . That 's where you met him ? " yes , I remember now ! It was Shirley ! Anyway , Shirley was what would be considered very light in color , so that one could hardly know she was a colored woman , unless they just knew . You know what I mean . " nodded my head yes . I was learning much more than I had realized I would . It made no difference to me . Jackson Finley was my friend , regardless of anything . " Just a minute . Let me find the newspaper clipping about the fire . I keep a file on the important events of the town . You wait right here ! I 'll be right back in a few minutes . " - huh ! Most often than not . She knows lots a ' stuff . " He scuffed his toe against the wooden floor . " She always knows where the good books are , too . This here was a good one . " held up a book about the Hardy Boys . " I 'm reading all of these , you know . They have all kinds of adventures , like I 'm gonna have some day , maybe . " I loved his enthusiasm . " I 'll just bet you will ! " I agreed . " See you later , maybe ! I 'm gonna find another one of these and check it out . Tell Miss Livvy I said , ' Howdy ' . " He book to read . Miss Olivia came back in just in time to stamp his book with the date due . She patted him on the back and sent him on his way . " That due . His daddy took off for Canada , or parts unknown , to keep from fighting in Vietnam . Bless that little Jimmy 's heart . Life can be so unfair sometimes . Now , let me see . Here is the clipping about the fire and how your friend got burned . Why don 't you read it for yourself ? " they slept . The fire was apparently arson , and perhaps the work of someone who had a grudge . Jackson sustained burns over thirty - five percent of his body . The fire is being investigated by the fire department and the police . It of where the burns on his body were located . He was taken to the Bankton General Hospital , and Shirley was taken to the city morgue . She was pronounced dead at the scene of the fire . More to follow later . " to speak of . It seems they dismiss crimes like this one with an ' Oh , well , what do you expect from these colored people ? They are always fighting amongst themselves . ' Things that happen in that neighborhood don 't always get investigated . " listen , there is one more thing you might can help me with . Can you tell me where Anne lives , by any chance ? Could you look at these addresses and maybe help me that way ? She is the only clue to his whereabouts that I have right now . " Taking the sheet of paper , she looked carefully at each name and address . " Ah , here we are . I remember now ! What a wedding that was ! All the cream of society was there . Jackson was just a teenager at the time . It was in the early 20 's , I believe . back in my chair , I realized that I now had plenty of information to continue my search . Looking my new friend in the those kind , soft brown eyes , I realized they had a twinkle in them . I knew the town of Bankton was quite fortunate in having such a character as she was , manning the town library . She was a treasure , indeed . She helped me locate on the map where Henry and Anne resided . That is where I was headed upon leaving Miss Olivia 's presence . " May I hug you , Ma ' am ? " I inquired ? " I won 't permit you to leave until you do ! " She laughed merrily . " Please come back to see me and also keep me up - to - date on your progress . Perhaps you can bring Jackson in to visit with me ? " map in hand , I followed the tiny arrows that Miss Olivia had drawn on it to the address marked with an " X " . The wind was blowing once again , and I pulled my heavy coat closer to my body . The paper was fluttering in my hand and the wind almost pulled it away . This town was in the foothills of the mountains and it felt like snow might be on its way to Bankton . How the homeless would survive without a place to stay the night , I had no idea . There must be other refuges that they sought when the Wayfarer 's Mission was closed . I knew , without an apparently well - to section of town , certainly nothing like South Main had been . I checked the numbers on the door facings of these stately homes until I found what I was looking for . Carefully folding the map , I placed it in an inner pocket of my coat . My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it in my ears , and I stood there looking at the house . I was imagining my reunion with my friend , and tears filled my eyes . Standing for a moment on the sidewalk , I viewed the house . It was a large Colonial House with a wing on each side and a large porch that went all the way across and around to one side . Slowly mounting the steps to the porch , I looked about and my vision took in the rockers on it . Then I rang the doorbell and listened to the chimes that rang inside the house , and waited . The door slowly opened and an elderly man stood in the doorway , and just looked at me for a few seconds . " Well ? What do you want ? We 're not buying anything ! " he told me gruffly . " Well ! Speak up ! Cat got your tongue ? " " Er . . uh . . . I 'm looking for Jackson Finley , sir , " I stammered . " He 's not here ! Now be off with you ! " he shouted , then muttered , " Riff , raff ! " The door slammed in my face . Stubbornly , I rang the doorbell again . The door remained closed , and I waited . I rang again , and waited . Finally , it was flung open again . a friend of his from several years ago . Please , may I come in ? It is rather chilly out here , and my story will take a few minutes . I mean you course , come on in . I 'm sorry to keep you outside for so long . My husband is ill , and is not always the most hospitable person , to be sure . " to my embarrassment , my stomach growled loudly . My face must have turned a flaming red , and I didn 't know what to do . Should I apologize , I do go into the kitchen , young man . I could use something to eat . Perhaps we could have a sandwich . I took my husband upstairs to rest awhile . That is why it took me a few minutes to answer the doorbell . " I followed her through the long hallway , and into another that took off to the left . Finally , we came to the large dining room , went through it and into the kitchen . " We turned to me and looking me in the eye , asked , " How do you know my brother ? What are you really after ? Why are you bothering us ? " Whoa ! This woman seemed to be running first hot , then cold . I changed my whole life , Mrs . Stanton ! I owe him so very much . I have been looking for him for days and I feel he is really somehow in need of the houses that burned and they told me what had happened , and that Jackson had been taken away in an ambulance ; that his wife had died in the fire . Then I just kind of began searching and finally wound up in the Emergency Room at the Bankton General . From there it was just kind of a trail that I followed to you . " " Hmmm . I see . " " Anne , Anne ! Where in tarnation are you , woman ? " This came from upstairs . Apparently her husband had awakened and was heading down the stairs . " Excuse me , he 's not well , and I need to go see what he needs . I 'll be back in a few minutes . " back in my chair , I took a few minutes to reflect on her behavior . So far , she had not been forthcoming with answers , only questions . I could understand that she did not speak freely of her feelings or was perhaps not even willing to share any information about Jackson 's whereabouts . However , I felt I could persuade her to tell me , if I had enough time to wondered about her husband . What kind of illness had he ? He certainly sounded as though he was not quite in his right mind . I know now that he the cookie jar . Opening it , she held it out to me . " Have a cookie with your coffee , " she spoke , smiling a curious little smile . yes ma ' am . That is why I sought you out . Could you please tell me ? Is he here , perhaps ? Are you maybe preparing me for what he may look like now ? Is he not able to get about ? " " I don 't have a job , but I can get one . No , I don 't have a place to live yet , but I 'll find one . Please , tell me where he is . " I had been turning the cookie round and round in my hands until it began crumbling , causing cookie crumbs to spread on the table in front of me . Looking down at the crumbs , I realized what I had done , and began apologizing . " Sorry , Mrs . Stanton . I didn 't mean to make a mess . I 'll clean it up . " I began brushing the crumbs off into the plate . no , young man . Didn 't I tell you ? I sent him back to live among those people he loves so much better than he does his family . He 's not here at all . Hasn 't been for some time . Now , go ! Don 't come back , you hear ? Don 't come back , ever ! " wandered the streets aimlessly , not knowing the town , yet praying I would find my way to some kind of shelter for the night . Thanks to Anne Stanton , I did have some food in my stomach , but morning would bring hunger anew . I had been a soldier , though , so hunger was no stranger to me . Survival was the thing right now . Others were out and about as I made my way along the streets . I looked into each person 's face , looking , searching for my friend . Perhaps I would find him as I walked . Sometimes they looked back at me as if to say , " What are you looking at ? " Then they would look away . Others would just duck their heads if they noticed did I know there was an agent who kept the homeless from staying too long . He checked the rest rooms on a regular basis , and noticed who stayed resting on a bench without buying a ticket . He allowed me three hours and then turned me out again . By that time it was dark . I went back to wandering the streets , looking for a doorway to rest within . In the part of town where I found myself , there were several homeless who huddled together . Looking down an alleyway , I saw a large metal can with sparks shooting up from it . I headed for it , seeing there were some people gathered around it . They glanced at me suspiciously , seeing , I suppose , that I had on a nice friend ! I 'm not giving up my coat , just because you ask for it . I happen to need it as well . " I was remembering my days of being bullied in elementary school , and was determined that it would not happen here and now . wasn 't for nothing that the military service had made me strong . My muscles were well - developed , and I knew I could take the big one , but apparently , these three had worked together before to take down unsuspecting victims . While the big one made a frontal attack , the other two circled around behind me . Light and sparks from the fire flickered and made strange shadows on the walls of the buildings in the alleyway , as we fought and tussled . The coat I was trying to keep was hampering my free movement , and just as I thought I had the big guy , one of the others hit me with something heavy and I went down , unconscious . I came to my senses several hours later , stripped of my coat , and my shoes were missing as well . Moaning , I sat up and shivered almost uncontrollably . For a few moments , I didn 't know where I was ; then it came to me . . I had been robbed . The fire had gone out in the metal trash my way to the end of the alley , I stepped on the refuse and cut the bottoms of my feet on broken glass strewn across my path . Just as I exited the alleyway , a patrol car was cruising by . " Hey , you there ! Get off the streets and go home and sleep it off ! " I need help ! I 've just been robbed of my coat and shoes by some men in the alleyway . I haven 't been drinking , officers . " I think he has been in a fight of some kind . He could be telling the truth . First , let 's see if he can walk a straight line . If not , we can take him and throw him in the drunk tank overnight , with the other boozers . " if my life depended on it . At least if I were thrown in the jail overnight , I 'd have a place to sleep . Maybe I could get some information , too , in the meantime . After all , what better place to get help in finding someone , than in a police station . So , it wasn 't long before I was in the back seat of the cruiser . I would check the bottoms of my feet for glass when I was safely in a cell . Off we went . They didn 't even bother to book me , but just put me in the large cell with several other men and told me to sleep it off . They would charge me the next morning , they informed me . I slowly became aware of sounds around me , I realized I was lying in a bed , not sitting in a corner in the drunk tank . What was going on ? What was I doing here in this place ? Where was I anyway ? The sounds reaching my ears seemed to be muted , as if they were plugged with cotton . ' What gives ? ' I thought . ' Where am I ? ' Slowly trying to sit up , I was aware of pain in my head and as I moved my feet , I realized they had something on them . Were they bandaged ? I could feel the pain in them as I moved them in the bed . " There , there , Mr . O ' Hanlon . Don 't move about so much . You 've suffered a concussion . You should lie still for a while longer . " twenty - four hours , sir . They brought you here from the jail , unconscious and unresponsive . They found your identification in your empty billfold . When they realized your condition yesterday morning they probably another twenty - four hours for observation . I also will write orders for the nurse to check your feet for infection . Apparently , that was quite dirty glass you must have stepped on . Nasty stuff , infections . remembered then that I no longer had a coat or shoes . Winter was still upon us , and I was now in a tighter situation than before . With my coat , plan had certainly taken on a down - turn . Here I was , conjecturing with no real facts to go on . I had to go back as soon as I could to Miss Olivia for more information . I lay there wondering how I was going to get there , and how it was all going to come together . I drifted off to sleep . ( To be continued ) Posted by Blogs are so much fun ! 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April 4 , 2017Memoir 5 Comments The Priestess squealed with delight when I asked if I could kinda maybe sorta play D & D with them . She hugged me with a strength that lifted my feet off the floor . Then she told me that she 'd ask her boyfriend , who acted as the dungeon master for their group . They played the games mostly on the weekend when several people who had gone to our school but who had graduated could drive up to play . That was part of an ongoing campaign and the Dungeon Master didn 't think that it would be possible for me to join in that . However , alongside that they occasionally played much shorter adventures the DM had written that didn 't fit into the ongoing game they played on the weekends . He told me that I could play for the first time with one of those . Those were typically done during the week and , as a matter of practicality , only people who were currently on campus played . I was actually counting on this because it wasn 't the game I was interested in . The other players all had characters they had played before . I showed up slightly early to create a character . While I rolled the die and wrote the numbers down on a piece of paper , some of the other players came in . With each entrance , I glanced up only to be mildly disappointed . I had an ulterior motive . Finally , she came in . She didn 't walk so much as swagger . She wore her faded , loose fitting jeans low on her hips , which wasn 't the style for women in the early eighties . They were belted with a heavy black belt . T - shirt . Black leather jacket . Converse high - tops . Her dark hair was cut short in a mannish style by a barber in town . In retrospect , I guess she dressed like a cliché , but I had never known a woman like that before . Perhaps I 'd seen someone like that on the street , in Provincetown or Greenwich Village , but never someone my own age who I actually knew . In any case , nothing she wore seemed like a costume or put on . It all looked very natural on her . These days , we 'd call her butch , but back then it was a forbidden word . She told stories about how , when she 'd go into town , she might be mistaken for a man . Rather than being offended , she seemed to be delighted by this and the stories usually ended with her bursting into a high pitched giggle . Still , it always seemed odd to me because underneath it all she always seemed female to me . In fact , it was just that odd mix of masculine and feminine that made her so compelling . Well , Trouble , as I anticipated , was the only one with a car . She had barely gotten the words , " Who wants to come … . " out of her mouth when I eagerly volunteered . The nearest grocery that was still open at that hour was two towns over , about a ten or fifteen minute drive away . I slid into the passenger side of her old Dodge Dart . It looked like the sort of car one of my father 's friends might drive . Large American cars like that were rapidly disappearing . The front seat was continuous , more like a sofa - much better for what we used to call " making out . " Trouble and I had been friendly , but not friends . We had friends in common , but had spent little time together that wasn 't in the company of other people . She made some attempts as small - talk . I slid my hand across the seat and onto her thigh . This was even more awkward than it sounds because the seat was quite wide and reaching her thigh involved more leaning than I anticipated and any hope for grace or subtlety was lost . Still , I think if fell short of clumsy . My new school was very different from my previous school , which was different from the one before that . The town was bigger . It was also richer . People refer to the town as " diverse , " but in some ways it was the least diverse , unless you 're talking about skin tone , which is of course what most people mean when they say " diverse . " That , however , is a tirade for another day . There were some distinct advantages to going to a larger school . We had all sorts of enrichment classes available with didn 't exist in my other school . Instead of gym , you could take ballet or modern dance . There was a variety of music classes , as well as drama , set design . There was a larger choice of languages . There wasn 't just " art class , " either . They were more specific , including , believe it or not , a weaving class . It wasn 't really a " basket weaving " class , since we wove other things as well . For some reason , there were no boys in the class and the class was really small . Most of the girls in the class were not in my other classes and none were in my larger social circle , so it had the feeling of being a little respite from the larger track of my life . A couple of days a week , I 'd head to the art room which was located at the end of a hall where I had no other classes and never otherwise went . We all sat around a table in the back of the room . It was even physically isolated . With so few students , there was no real need for the teacher to keep order and she allowed us to bring in a boom box and play music . It was just a really nice pleasant environment . The was one girl I remember quite well . I can still conjure up her face in my memory . She was a petite , pretty girl with dark skin and delicate features . She was soft - spoken and gave the overall impression of being gentle and dainty . Sometimes , there are people about whom , after that part of your life has passed , you think , " I should have reached out more . " I liked her and she was always friendly to me , but we never became friends for the uninteresting reason that our social circles did not overlap . She was not in any other classes with me that year , but the next year she would be in my history class . Otherwise , I rarely saw her . Like me , she was relatively new to the school , but unlike me she came from much further away . Her father , was an executive with a large international corporation and her family had been living in Kenya . I believe they were all American , but it was so long ago I can 't be certain if I knew that for a fact or it was something I just assumed . One day , she came in with a bootleg cassette . This wasn 't the usual homemade tape where someone had smuggled a cassette recorder into a live show and you could barely make out the music . I don 't know where she got it and she wasn 't telling , but she was obviously thrilled to have it . They were studio recordings of an unknown artist whose album that was about to be released . " Everybody , " she said as she commandeered the boombox , " listen up . You 've got to hear this . This guy is going to be the next big thing . " February 14 , 2016Memoir 1 Comment We left the sushi restaurant and headed a few blocks east and south . To my surprise , we stopped in front of a large , old brick building which I couldn 't see well in the dark . It looked like it might be an old school that had been built towards the end of the nineteenth century , yet strange and foreboding . I believed we were going back to Slacker 's apartment . The street was lined with old tenement buildings . Was that what I had been expecting ? We went through an old heavy wood door , which to my surprise hadn 't been locked . The interior was dark , cavernous , with high ceilings . You could see and not see , like in a dimly lit night club . In front of us was a staircase with a trace of a dim yellow from an incandescent bulb illuminating the edges of the steps , but not managing to reach to the bottom . To our right , was more darkness . Was there more building that way ? Another room ? To our left was an opening . It wasn 't so much a separate room as a separate part of the entry way , itself larger than the space we had first entered . There were folding chairs arranged in rows , about half occupied by people who were staring into the light emanating from a stage . Actors were on the stage . There was a set , but it was sparse . There were costumes though . Rough approximations of medieval clothing . Old language . Shakespeare ? We slipped into some seats . The young man on the stage says he comes from France . Some others enter . Is one a king ? Gavestone . Mortimer . Marlowe , perhaps ? There is a queen , she is unhappy . This unexpected play . It is like entering a dream . Plots . Murder . All so strange . It feels not quite real . Of course , it is not real , it 's a play . But sitting watching the play is what feels unreal . We walk towards the stairs I saw when we first came in . A big , heavy , broad wooden staircase . The rest of the audience files out . We are the only ones going upstairs . The hallway is wide and lined with doors . We go inside one . There is a narrow bed and the room isn 't much bigger . The ceiling is high . There might be more volume unused above our heads than used at surface level . I like it here and I don 't . The building is interesting . I wish I could just wander around it . But there seems to be no locks anywhere . It makes me uneasy . I think to myself , I can complain , but if I complain then I should just leave . I resign myself to accepting it and I say nothing . The next morning , I head down the hallway in search of the toilet . I find it . Like everything else in this place , it feels big , cavernous and empty and as if it was transported from another era . I have that strange feeling of having walked through some sort of portal into parallel universe where everything looks normal , but feels wrong . The bathroom looks like it could be in a dormitory built in the beginning of the century . Along one wall is a trough with some taps over it . Toilet stalls are along the other wall . A young man is washing his hands . He smiles slightly , says hello quietly and returns to washing his hands . I go into one of the stalls . I decide that I won 't shower here . I need a shower , but feel too insecure . Too much empty space . Too few locks . Too many strangers , but too isolated at the same time . I wouldn 't want to stand alone in here with my clothes off . There 's a light rap on the door . A young woman pokes her head in . " My boyfriend said you had a female friend visiting . I wanted to come and meet her . " She walked into the room and plopped herself on the bad . She was very pale . There was something noticeably tactile about her flesh . She wore a loose fitting tee shirt . The neck was stretched out and the shirt was several sizes too big . She had a quiet voice , light brown hair and gray eyes and gave the impression of softness . She spoke quietly , but rapidly . She was saying something about Derrida . Derrida . Derrida . Derrida . Her boyfriend tells her about Derrida . Her boyfriend is so smart . Do I like Derrida ? She jumps up . She must get back to her room , she says . Her boyfriend will return soon and he 'll be so mad if he knows she 's been bothering us . Before she goes , she puts her hands on my shoulder and says that four of us will have to get together soon . I think she 's hinting at a foursome and when the door closes , I ask Slacker if that 's what she means . " I think so , but don 't want to . It 's not the foursome . It 's not her . It 's her boyfriend . He creeps me out . Did you hear the way she talks about him . It 's like she idolizes him . It 's not healthy . " He pauses for a moment as if judging how much to say . " She told me that during sex he likes to take a razor blade and cut her because watching her bleed turns him on . She showed me her breasts . They 're covered with small cuts . If it was just kinky sex … well , that 's not my taste anyway . But he dominates her out of bed . She 's sweet , but I think she 's naive . I 'm afraid it will go no where good . I worry about her . " January 6 , 2016Memoir 2 Comments Over the course of a couple of years , a routine had developed . I 'd take the subway from Brooklyn to Luscious ' place in Chelsea at least once a week . I 'd get there around between eight and nine and bring a six - pack . Luscious would have certainly sneered at today 's commingling of yuppie consumerism with downtown cool , artisanal this , single source that . Some of the artifacts that now make up hipster material culture were only just beginning to appear at that point and Luscious had only disdain for them . " We 're not going to consume our way to a better world , " she once said to me . So , I 'd bring a six - pack of decidedly mass market beer . Michelob , strangely , was her preferred brand , but I don 't think it really mattered that much . Food snobbery back then was in its infancy and most Americans ate the same stuff most of the time . She 'd greet me at the door with an enthusiastic greeting , as if my expected arrival and ritual proffering of a six - pack was a pleasant novelty . She 'd relieve me of my package and take my coat if it was cold . While she put the beer in the fridge I 'd try , yet again , to make friends with her freaky King Charles Spaniel with a hyperactive thyroid . Her apartment was a studio on the first floor . It was long and narrow . Although a post - war building , the ceiling was high and the light from the lamp next to the brown suede sofa never seemed to penetrate the darkness . If felt oddly cavernous and cramped at the same time . I 'd sit on the sofa , or just pace nearby , and Luscious would emerge from the kitchen with two beers . She would always finish her beer before mine . Holding her bottle up to the light and making a playful frown at its emptiness . She 'd grab mine from my hand and look at the quarter or third still remaining . " Little people drink so slowly , " she 'd sigh . She 'd chug - a - lug the remainder of my bottle . " Don 't worry . I 'll go get us some more . " It was like an ongoing bit in a sitcom . It was also the only way I was able to keep up with her drinking . It was hard to say how many drinks I had had in a night because I almost never finished them . She was , as I 've mentioned before , a rock and roll obsessive , and this would be the time when she 'd play me something new there was anything interesting . She was my own private pop music reporter and it was principally through her that I kept up on new music . If there was nothing new , she 'd put on something old . Sometimes I 'd get an impromptu lesson , such as the time she played multiple versions of " Gloria " , which she insisted was the world 's most sexist song for reasons that I never understood . She delighted in Patti Smith 's intro to her version , " Jesus died for somebody 's sins , but not mine . " I never really understood that either , but I guess it helps to have been raised as a Christian . Both of Luscious parents had come to the U . S . from Ukraine in the wake of the Second World War . She was born in the East Village , spoke Ukrainian and was raised in the Ukrainian Catholic Church . As ten o ' clock approached , we get ready to leave . In the summer , we might take the subway a couple of stops to Christopher Street and make our way eastward on foot , hitting a series of night spots along the way . In the winter time , we 'd walk out in the coldest weather without coats because we were heading to small , hot , sweaty clubs , really bars that had bands , and those places didn 't have coat rooms and some members of the audience had sticky fingers . So , we 'd charge east towards Seventh Avenue at top speed and hail a cab as quickly as possible . Luscious , the tall one , would stick out a hand . The cab would pull over and she 'd get in first . One night , she slid across the seat , behind the driver . During the crime wave of the seventies , cabs had started installing plexiglass partitions between the driver and passengers . It was typically on this partition , behind the drivers head , that the taxi license with the name of the driver is displayed . She looked at the name on license , greeted him in Ukrainian and he replied in kind . After a couple of more exchanges , she said , " My friend doesn 't speak Ukrainian . Can we speak English ? " Luscious would typically chat with the taxi drivers . It was one of her ways of finding out what was going on the city . Despite Luscious ' radical politics , or perhaps because if it , she usually steered clear of controversial subjects , satisfying herself with being on the receiving end of the conversation . Perhaps it was different this time because the diver was from the same country as her parents . In any case , I no longer recall the conversation that led up to it . I think I was only half listening anyway , but I recall he said that United States was a wonderful country . The cab driver was now getting visibly mad . " You don 't know how bad bad can be . You are naive . I know what I 'm talking about . You are a foolish girl . " September 17 , 2015Memoir , Uncategorized 3 Comments After dropping my sister off at Bennington College for the summer , my parents now prepared to free themselves of the responsibilities of their younger daughter for a few weeks in the summer . My parents had been unfailingly indulgent throughout my childhood , and now that my sister and I were finally of an age that they could have , once again , time to themselves , they divested themselves of our presence in a comparably indulgent way . I was still a year too young for many of the summer programs run by colleges . I could not have accompanied my sister to Bennington even if I had wanted . However , with one daughter away for the summer it seemed to them to make the most sense to send the other daughter away as well , although it could be argued that I was not nearly old enough or mature enough for that . My sister and I were the sole children in our family and we were only about a year and a half apart , and one grade apart in school . Often , we were treated like twins . We shared many things and what we couldn 't share my mother often bought in pairs , so we were often dressed alike , or nearly alike . I tagged along after my sister , to the park , to dance classes , to horseback riding lessons . Much of my life , I was pushed by circumstances to behave as if I was a year or two older than I was . I was not aware of any pressure . In fact , I enjoyed the inevitable compliments about my maturity . As luck would have it , I just barely qualified for a program at a Well Known Art School only a few miles away in New York City . New York , New York . I 'd grown up in its orbit , reading its newspapers , watching its television stations . As kids , our parents took us into " the city " for its cultural institutions and events , museums , concerts , Broadway plays , dance performances , but it was always in and out , for a day , for an evening . At most we might stay long enough to get a bite to eat . Now I was going to spend an entire summer ( well , a month or so ) in the city off my parents ' leash . The dormitory was located on Union Square West on the corner of 15th Street , if my memory serves me correctly . The front of the building fronted the park , where the students were told to never go . For younger people today , the level of danger that existed in large cities at that time is something they really don 't understand since they never experienced it . Teenagers were just as inclined then to ignore adults ' warnings if those warnings seemed exaggerated . Yet we avoided the park . I walked in there exactly one time that summer with a group of several other girls . Back then , it was frequently described as an open air drug mart . From what I saw on my one visit , that was a fairly accurate description . In any case , it was so bleak and unkempt , there was no real reason to go in there anyway . The dorm rooms were arranged in suites , five or six rooms around a common area with a shared bathroom and a kitchenette . Two of the rooms were single rooms and both housed older students . The other rooms were doubles . It was one of the old , formerly commercial , buildings that ringed the square and the ceilings were high . The beds were bunk beds and high enough to stand underneath . I had nightmares about rolling out almost every night and I felt nervous climbing up and down the ladder to the bed every day and every night , especially down , since I tend to wake up groggy and light - headed and am not myself until I 've moved around a bit . I don 't think I changed the sheets once while I was there . The window was huge and the sill was wide . When I arrived , my roommate , a large blond girl , was sitting on the sill . She invited me to join her on the window ledge which was wide enough to seat the two of us . " Look down there , " she said . This was far from the tallest building I 'd ever been in , but it was the tallest in which I had spent any length of time . I looked downward at the little cars and dots that were people and had a distinct sense of vertigo . It just felt too easy to fall . I made some excuse and walked away from the window . I wandered back into the large central room of the suite . There was a young woman with straight black hair which stood on end in an unusual way which looked messy but had to have been intentional . " How old are you ? " she asked . " Thirteen , " I replied . " I didn 't think they let people your age into this program , " she said and walked back into her room . She would turn out to be sixteen . As someone who was always the youngest in a group , I was used to the petty bigotry teenagers had about age . I would find that there were few people willing to talk to me . I 'm not sure that I 'm a loner by nature so much as someone who learned to be a loner . I would soon learn that they made a really strange design decision with the dormitories . The main door to the suite required a key , but individual room inside had none , nor did the wardrobes have locks . The door to the suite was open . A student staying in another suite poked her head in the room . She was petite and perky with long red hair and would turn out to be one of the youngest students in the program along with me . Furthermore , she was in my class . She had one great advantage I did not possess , she was outgoing , and I happily tagged along after her . Alice , as I 'll call her , wanted some partners in crime to head on up to the boys ' floor . My roommate declined , as did the girl with the spiky black hair . The dormitories were single sex only by suites and most of those tended to grouped on floors . The result was that while you didn 't share bathrooms and didn 't have to be worried about being caught undressed , there was no real division and boys and girls they were on one another 's floors with regularity . As a summer program , people of any age had signed up , you just had to be past middle school . Although we all shared the dormitory , it quickly became clear that it was going to sort itself out by age . The self - segregation by age is something that has always seemed odd to me . Still , it is a fact . People do it , and in a situation like this , it became very obvious , college age , younger high school students , older high school students and adults . We all occupied the same space but barely talked to one another . It didn 't take long to find a suite in which a large number of the high school aged students had gathered . The noise coming from the suite told us which one was it . Introductions mostly involved asking where people were from since we came from around the country . Alice came from far enough away that I would never see her again after the summer . The internet , of course , didn 't exist yet and long distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive . It was still , primarily , a face - to - face world . Of course , this meant that I was exposed for the first time to people not from New Jersey . Uh oh , I thought . Why did I have to go and attract attention to myself by loudly proclaiming I was from New Jersey . Back home , I 'd been suffering from social ostracism . Music was not something to be simply enjoyed , but a means by which teenagers signaled allegiances . This was something I hated and I usually avoided discussion about music to avoid the inevitable social fallout . Worse yet , this was a mixed gender crowd . Boys were usually more aggressive when arguing about musical tastes . Asking me a straightforward , point blank question about music in a group of other high school students I 'd only just met and who were all older , including some terrifyingly adorable older boys , and were now staring at me waiting for an answer , I was a heartbeat away from wetting myself . Worse yet , the question was about Bruce Springsteen . Retrospective histories never convey the actual reception he received as I experienced it at the time . He was , in many ways , an anomaly . A musical genre of one . Sure , there were a small group of other bands who got their start along the Jersey Shore and played along a corridor that ran from New York to Philly , but they were a really small group of people that had little connection to the other musical trends of the time , and no connection whatsoever to larger cultural trends . " Wait here , " the boy said . " Who 's Bruce Springsteen , " a couple of Southerners whispered while he was gone . Minutes later he returned with a boom box and a pile of cassette tapes . He set it on the table . The cassettes were obviously homemade cassettes , the paper inserts covered in a minuscule scrawl . " Bootlegs , " he said proudly . " My friend recorded this one in Philly a couple of years ago . " There were some unique characteristics of Bruce fandom at this time . Springsteen became known , not through his studio recordings and radio airplay , but through his live shows . His energy at a show was legendary and they frequently lasted four hours . He once said that he would lose five pounds during a good show . His popularity was intensely regional , centered on Philadelphia , although New York was within its orbit , as was the entire state of New Jersey . His fans were passionate , but there were entire social sectors that more or less just ignored him . He didn 't usually engender hatred in those who were not interested in his music because he was not a pop star in the traditional sense . He seemed to have no connection to other areas of show business . The last thing you would ever think of would be a Bruce Springsteen branded line of cologne - or anything else for that matter , not even a leather jacket . More than anything , however , his fans ignored his studio albums . They traded live bootlegs with a seriousness I 've never seen in any other group of fans , although Grateful Dead fans might come close . At the time , I suspected he was far more popular than his record sales would indicate . And his popularity spread word of mouth . I knew of him because of my sister . My sister might qualify as Bruce Springsteen 's biggest fan . It was a strange evening . I hoped it would repeat , but soon the large mass of students would separate into smaller groups . The older students would complain about the noise and there wasn 't another large gathering like that again , at least not that I saw . Between getting settled and going through the ritual paperwork of registering for classes , it was a short school week . The weekend came and I was eager to get out and see New York City . About half a dozen of us , including Alice and Bruce Springsteen Boy headed to Times Square to take in a movie . We waited online for tickets . When I got up to the box office I took a five dollar bill out of my pocket . As I was bringing it forward towards the semi - circular opening in the ticket booth 's glass window , a man came out of no where , grabbed the bill from my hand and ran away . " He took my money , " I said in stunned disbelief . The woman at the box office just rolled her eyes . " That will be five dollars , " she said impatiently . The people around me grumbled . They all saw what happened . They didn 't care . I was taking too long . I pulled another bill out of my jeans pocket . This time , I kept it balled up in my fist until my fist was right at the box office window and pushed it through so that it was barely exposed until it was slipped into the slot . It was a way of behaving with money that I continue to do until this day . When people describe New York City in the seventies as out of control , it was not only the serious crimes that gave that sensation . A thirteen year old girl could be robbed in a crowd in broad daylight and no one in the crowd would even blink . It was routine . Expected . It was an overcast day and unseasonably cold for the summer . Still , one of our number was eager to see Central Park . The others concurred and after the movie we headed north . The park was not like the park today . There weren 't nearly as many people in it . It was unkempt and dingy , a sad ghost of its former self . We climbed up on top of one of the many rocks that had been hauled to this place a century ago to make the landscape . The were few people around and no one was interested in a group of high school students sitting on a rock . One of the other students reached into a large satchel she 'd been carrying and took a bottle out of her bag . Southern Comfort . I pretended to not be shocked . I 'd never had alcohol before , nor had I been around when other students drank it . I was aware of being the youngest of the group and I didn 't want to stand out . After all , my apparent youth and vulnerability had already been on display by the fact that of all the other people standing on line to buy movie tickets I was the one chosen to be the robber 's victim . Predators choose the young , the old , the sick . That was all past now and I wasn 't especially nervous sitting there on that rock , but I think I was not as relaxed as the others either . The bottle got passed around and I was intensely curious . I took a swig . It was sweet and cloying , like candy . It didn 't taste bad , but I can 't really say I liked it much either . I felt nothing . The next time it came around I just passed it on to the next person . No one seemed to notice that I didn 't drink . That would become my behavior throughout high school . I never drew attention to the fact that I didn 't drink or smoke pot , I just passed it on to the next person . I wouldn 't drink again until I got to college . In recent years , I 've spoken to people I knew in high school and referenced how " straight " I was . Few people except my closest friends remember me that way . One even swore up and down I drank and took drugs . I think because I was perceived as " artsy " people assumed I was doing things I wasn 't . Many of the high school age students were taking the same course of study , an introductory course , but not the girl with the spiky black hair . Whereas most of us were interested in " art " without much differentiation among media , she was very committed to photography and seemed to be advanced along those lines already having learned to develop her own film and make her own prints . After a few days , I noticed that she was alone a lot . The other older high school students and aspiring photographers seemed to avoid her . I heard noise coming from her room and the door was open . I walked over and stood in the doorway . She smiled and laughed . " Beggars can 't be chosers . " I might have been insulted , but that was pretty much the same situation for me in much of my life , so I sat down . " What are you listening to . " It was definitely something I hadn 't heard before . What was coming out of the box was barely more than static . More bootlegs , I assumed . Still , I didn 't know how much to attribute to the poor quality of the cassette or to the music itself . The girl with the black hair smiled , " I 'd be surprised if you had . I copied this off of a cassette a friend had copied off of someone from England . Can you even hear it ? The quality 's terrible . Still , this is all I have of them . I 've got to find a better recording somewhere . " She hit eject . She took out another cassette . From the writing on the insert I could see it was another homemade tape . " The quality on this one isn 't great , but it 's much better . At least you can hear the music . They 're called the Psychedelic Furs . " The next semester of graduate school wouldn 't commence until January . In the meantime , I had found a small apartment above a garage in the suburbs of New York , in a commuter town with easy access to the city . I spent most of my days painting . My shrink had given me Ritalin . He seemed to be convinced that I had ADD no matter how many times I told him I had no problem concentrating . In fact , quite the opposite . Even as a young child I could sit still and do the same thing for hours , especially if that thing was reading . My mother was always scolding me for reading , telling me that I 'd grow up to be socially maladapted , and telling my sister to take me out and make me play , goddammit . Still , my shrink was trying to figure out why someone would be intelligent , physically healthy , and even attractive and be such a failure as I was . He never said so in so many words , but I suspect this sounded to him like other patients he 'd had . He recommended a book about adults with ADD , which I dutifully read , becoming convinced with each page that I did not have ADD . Still , I took the medicine . I would be going back to graduate school and I was desperate to finally make something of myself . I had even ended my marriage in large part because my ex - husband was not supportive of my professional goals . With a few months to spare , I was spending most of my days painting . I would take the Ritalin in the morning and plant myself in front of the easel and not move until the sun had sunk low enough that I could no longer see well enough to paint . The apartment was one room and held virtually nothing other than a bed and my easel . Meanwhile , Nerdette had graduated from her doctoral program just in time for the job market for physicists to collapse . For the past couple of years she had been working in a dress shop in suburban Maryland , just outside Washington , D . C . She had applied for a position in her field in New York City . " Do you think I could live in New York on thirty thousand a year ? " she asked . I 'd only been back for a week and we met in the city . It was the first time in a long time that I 'd been back in New York . It was pleasant night in late summer and we headed to the Village . When I was in high school and we used to take the bus into the city , at Bleeker and MacDougal , there were four Caffes , one on each corner . Over the years , one after another closed . Further up the street , on MacDougal , there was Caffe Reggio . We headed over there to relax for a few hours between Nerdette 's interview and when it would be late enough to go out to a bar or nightclub . It had been a number of years since I 'd gone out at night in New York and I was at a loss as to where to go . Nerdette sat with her back to the sidewalk and I sat facing the other direction enjoying watching the passersby . A tall , light - skinned black man walked by . He first caught my eye because he was remarkably tall . I continued to look because he was so damned familiar . No sign of recognition crossed his face although he had glanced in my direction , and I thought maybe I was mistaken . Suddenly , when he was nearly passed , he came to a dead halt and swung is head around . The corners of his mouth rose into a giant , Cheshire cat grin . He strolled over with that confident gait he had always had pulled up a chair . " Treetop ! My , how you 've grown up ! " He was just a cute little club kid with purple nail polish and smeared black eyeliner when we first met years ago in a coffee shop in that hour after the bars close . " Of all the women I knew back then , you were the one I wanted to see again . I always got the feeling that you really liked me , not just the way I looked . " We exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together . I asked him where we should go that night . He had worked as a bouncer and a go - go dancer . If there was anyone who knew what bars and clubs to hit , it would be Treetop . He looked up at the twilight sky and sighed . " Damn , this city has gotten so expensive . It 's driven out a lot of the more interesting places . Money chokes everything . Young people , to live here they work twenty - four hours a day . It 's not the same . " There was a long pause . " Remember when New York used to be fun ? " January 1 , 2015Memoir Leave a comment Nerdette was in the bathroom putting on her makeup in the mirror . I was sitting at the kitchen table struggling to see my reflection in a small little compact . We were running late . There was nothing new about that , but this time there was a reason behind it . Getting Nerdette to agree to go to the New Year 's Eve party out someplace in Queens took a bit of arm twisting . A few months ago the four of us had gone out together . Tree Top 's main reason for asking his friend was because his friend had that New York City rarity , a car . Somehow , Nerdette got it in her head that we were trying to fix them up . She let me know in no uncertain terms that she did not like Tree Top 's friend , whose name I no longer remember . She also let Tree Top know . So , Tree Top now thought that Nerdette was a snobbish asshole . Nerdette assumed that , because Tree Top was handsome beyond belief , that he must be a vain arrogant asshole . The were both wrong . Nerdette was painfully insecure . Tree Top was a sensitive , smart guy who just happened to be born tall , muscular , with coffee - colored skin , golden brown eyes fringed by thick black lashes , soft curly hair that hung down in ringlets , high cheek bones , a strong jaw line and a deep , resonant voice . It 's tempting to roll one 's eyes and say , sarcastically , " What a burden , " but sometimes it was . Just like gorgeous women have people underestimate their intelligence and competence , gorgeous men have that problem too . However , Tree Top probably was the handsomest man I ever dated . Only an hour or two earlier , Tree Top phoned and asked if we were definitely coming . Finally , Nerdette relented . Tree Top gave us painstaking directions . The A train . Our to Rockaway Boulevard . Sit near the front of the train . Get out at the station exit closest to the front . He 'd be waiting for us near the station . Then we could all walk over to a party some friend of his was having . We took turns showering and started getting ready . With luck , we 'd be at the party before midnight . It was a shame that Nerdette hadn 't decided earlier because we could have gotten a lift from his friend with the car . Instead , it was going to be a long haul . The F train to Jay Street Borough Hall where we 'd change for the A . Then out to the deepest darkest Queens . It was going to be a long trip . When we got onto the A train , I told Nerdette to relax and settle in . There were more people than you would expect riding the train at that hour , of course that was still not many . Few people were alone . Mostly , people sat clustered in small groups . An odd hour . People going from one party to another , or going to a party late like we were , or maybe just heading home not caring too much that it was New Year 's Eve . Nerdette and I got deep in conversation . Suddenly , I looked up . We were pulling into a station . Through the windows of the subway car the darkness of the tunnel turned into the brightness of a white tiled subway station . Out of the corner of my eye , I saw the word " Rockaway . " " Oh , my ! This is it ! " I shouted and we both jumped up and hurried out of the car . As the doors closed and the train pulled away , I said , " I expected we 'd be above ground at this point . " I shrugged . What did I know about Queens ? We left the station through the exit near the front of the train like Tree Top had told us and emerged onto the sidewalk . It was a comparatively warm night for late December and , with our coats on , it wasn 't at all uncomfortable . I looked around . I scanned the street for Tree Top . At six - foot five he was hard to miss . I told him that I couldn 't predict when we 'd get there and he had promised to wait . " I asked . He said that it wasn 't really a good way to choose a place to meet and that 's why he was going to wait at the subway entrance . He said that the station was located at an odd intersection . We wouldn 't actually exit on Rockaway , but onto Liberty or something . " " Hey , Kid , " Nerdette said , " Don 't want to say anything , but that sign says ' Fulton and Rockaway . ' This doesn 't look like the place . Do you think he could have meant the other entrance ? " I felt slightly uncomfortable walking away from the subway entrance . What if Tree Top was delayed for some reason and he 'd come and we wouldn 't be there . On the other hand , we 'd been standing around for some time now . It was all just odd . The streets weren 't quite deserted , it was New York City after all , but they were pretty damned quiet . Occasionally , we 'd see young men in groups of three or four walking by . I didn 't want to worry Nerdette , but it didn 't look like a good part of town to me . As we walked past an abandoned lot , she noted the same thing . " Do you think this area is safe ? " " Are you kidding ? Tree Top wouldn 't tell us to get off at a dangerous location . " But I was beginning to have my doubts . I was bothered by the fact that we saw no women on the street and the men we saw were all in groups . The young men through a glance over their shoulder and hastened their step . " We 're lost ! " my five foot one inch hundred pound friend yelled as she took several quick steps that wasn 't quite a run in their direction . It was faintly ridiculous to what several average and larger than average men run away from my tiny friend , however it added to the sense of being in a dangerous place . Wherever we were , we were someplace where people didn 't trust strangers . I don 't know how long we spent wandering back and forth between the two subway entrances , but at some point we heard a bang , and then another bang . We headed back to the train station and headed underground . Right on the other side of the turnstile were a cluster of teenagers . Several boys and the first girls we 'd since we 'd gotten off the train . One of the girls approached us . " Has everyone shot off their guns yet . " " Good , " the girl said . " We can go home now . We wanted to get back before midnight , then when we realized the time we figure we ought to wait here a few minutes . You know , " she said giving us a look like we weren 't quite right in the head , " you really shouldn 't be on the streets at midnight on New Year 's Eve . You could get hit by a stray bullet . " The teenage girl who had been talking raised her eyebrows as did all here companions . " Wow … I know what you did . You wanted the Rockaway Boulevard stop . This is Rockaway Avenue . You want to go to the other platform and get the train going in the other direction . " " Yeah , well , I think we 're just going to go home now , " Nerdette said . At this point , continuing onto Rockaway Boulevard seemed futile . Tree Top certainly couldn 't still be waiting for us . " I was , at first . I was waiting . A train came in the station shortly before midnight and I watched while everyone got off . Then I just stood there . It was a long time until the next train . I was a little annoyed , but then you didn 't get off of that one either . Then I was furious , and then … . " " Jeez . I was so worried when I realized that you were probably standing on the corner in Bed - Stuy . No one bothered you , did they . " " Well , good . I 'm glad you 're okay . My family is getting together for a New Years Day dinner tomorrow . Why don 't you stop by ? " The next day , we were back on the A train , this time headed to the Howard Beach stop . We passed by both the Rockaway Avenue and the Rockaway Boulevard stops . Tree Top still lived with his father in a Cape Cod style house . His whole family was there . Although Tree Top was born and raised in New York City , his father had roots in the South and insisted that we had to eat some black - eyed peas and collard greens on New Year 's Day because it was supposed to be good luck . The beans stand for health and the greens stand for prosperity . September 14 , 2014Memoir Leave a comment Jane was not her name , but her real name was an equally common one . In many ways , she was much like her name . Pretty enough , but not a stunner . Slightly taller than average , but not tall enough to stand out . Dark skinned , but not noticeably so . Neither curvy nor boyish . As I try to recall her appearance thirty years later , I can 't even conjure in my mind how she wore her hair . I 'm pretty sure she did have hair because if she didn 't I would have noticed . I probably wouldn 't have noticed her at all in our large school if we didn 't have several classes together , most notably a drama class that had perhaps a dozen students . It 's impossible to overlook someone in a drama class , especially a small one . She was , I recall , always friendly , but in a distant , quiet way . If Jane was plain , Lola was a stunner . Voluptuous , sultry , a Puerto Rican girl with glossy , black hair , coffee - colored skin and large black eyes . She and I were rapidly becoming friends . I remember one day , standing in the hallway of our school . It must have been lunchtime because none of us were in a hurry . Jane mentioned to Lola that she was having a party that weekend . She asked her to come . She didn 't ask me . I shuffled my feet a little bit and tried to not look too awkward . I was making friends in school , so this wasn 't crushing , and although Jane and I were on friendly terms , we weren 't friends , so it wasn 't a shock that I wouldn 't be invited . I did find it a little strange that she would invite Lola while I was standing there . So , while this wasn 't a huge social humiliation or a dramatic personal blow , everyone likes to be liked and I wanted to be invited . My discomfort must have been palpable because Jane turned to me and said , " I don 't want you to think that I don 't want to invite you . My brother and his friends give me a hard time about acting ' too white . ' It 's bad enough as it is . If I invited white kids to my party , they 'd give me so much trouble . " Prior to attending this school , all my other schools had been mostly white . I could see from my first day there that some sort of self - segregation was going on in the school , but I hadn 't yet learned the whys and wherefores . I say self - segregated , but don 't imagine anything too terribly hostile . Outside the school , there was a grassy area shaded by tall trees along a small stream . If you walked by at lunchtime , you 'd see teenagers eating bagged lunches or lunches bought at a nearby shop . You might see a cluster of half a dozen black boys with one white boy or a group of four or five white girls with a couple of black girls . In fact , I 'd say that self - segregation along gender lines was more common than along racial lines . However , I had always gone to public schools and was used to mixed sex groups and knew what to expect and how to navigate them socially . A racially integrated school was still new to me . I still didn 't know how to navigate it . So Jane 's reason for not inviting me was in important piece of information . She was experiencing social pressure from her family . A week or two later , in our drama class , as some sort of trust exercise , we each had to tell the class something the rest of the class didn 't know about us . I was a pretty straight kid with an unremarkable life and finding some deep secret was harder than you might expect . I can 't remember what I said . In fact , I can 't remember what anyone said , except Jane . She told us that her brother and his friends made fun of her for being a " wannabe " because she got good grades . It would be a few years yet before Spike Lee 's School Daze would popularize the term . She said that she told her brother , " I 'm not going to get bad grades just because you think getting good grades is ' white . ' I don 't think being ignorant is being ' black . ' I going to do what I want to do and be myself and I don 't care what you say . " But she did care , she told us , and she tried hard to act " black " and to not seem " white " in any other way . This memory was jogged by a short article by John McWhorter , " No , ' Acting White ' Has Not Been Debunked , " the overall thrust of which is summarized in the title . I followed the link from his article to an opinion piece that was given as an example of the opinions McWhorter was countering . The core of Nia - Malika Henderson 's article , " What President Obama gets wrong about ' acting white ' " is : The North Carolina based study showed black students , some in predominantly black schools , and others in predominantly white schools , negotiating peer pressure and class selection in much the same way that their white peers did . The study suggests a common strain that sometimes has poor white kids dealing with the burden of being seen as " uppity " and " snobbish , " and black kids in predominantly white school settings , on occasion grappling with that same notion , with a racialized overlay . It 's essentially nerds versus jocks , yet it plays out in very nuanced ways depending on the school setting and is complicated by class , race and in - group versus out - group pressures . The fact that a similar dynamic is at work in other society and among other groups does not negate the reality that academically high - achieving black students in some communities ( note , some not all ) are criticized by their family and friends for " acting white . " Now that Henderson has jogged my memory , I can recall having critical things said to me by working class boys about the fact that I got good grades , calling me a snob . It was ineffectual because they were not part of my social circle . Had I come from a family with a strong working class identity , perhaps my response to that would have been different . March 6 , 2014Memoir 16 Comments I was looking for a phone in an isolated area . The campus had about as many acres as students , but there were only a handful of public telephones . There were several near the cafeteria and that was where I would go to call my parents about once a week or so . That , however , was one of the most public places . There were two dormitories about two miles away from the center of campus . I had rarely ever even been in one of them , but I had a vague recollection of having seen a pay phone there , so I walked over . The walk down the narrow curving road with woods looming on either side reminded me of a recurring dream I 'd been having for about a year . In it , I was riding a bicycle on a road very much like that one , perhaps slightly curvier . Slowly , I would lose my eyesight until couldn 't see the road anymore . I would try to stop , but instead I 'd be speeding up . Through partial vision , I could barely see the road well enough to follow it . Finally , I wouldn 't be able to see anything at all and I would crash . An anxiety dream , it was almost ridiculously easy to analyze . A precocious student , I had graduated from high school early and received a nice , big , fat helping of scholarship money to attend this private liberal arts college . My first year , I loaded up on courses and was taking more than the suggested number of credits . My grades were excellent . Then my social life began to fall apart and , with it , my grades . I changed majors . Then I changed majors again . A year earlier , I went through a phase during which I didn 't bathe , didn 't get out of bed for days at a time and ate nothing but peanut butter . I received grades of incomplete in all the classes I had taken that semester . I had a year to make them up . The previous semester , the fall semester of my junior year , I finally settled on literature as a major for no better reason than I liked to read and it seemed to come easily to me . Read a few books . Mull them over for a day or so . Churn out twenty pages . I could do that even as I was falling apart . In fact , I felt as if I was finally beginning to put myself back together . That 's where the anxiety dream came in . Unlike when I was younger , I no longer had a plan . I couldn 't see where I was going , I was just trying to navigate each curve as it came up on me . My grades were finally back up . I was attempting to make a few friends who were not part of a New Age cult . Did I really want to study literature ? That certainly hadn 't ever been part of my plan , but now my plan was just to get the hell out of this fucking hell hole of a school with a bachelor of arts degree and my brain intact . What would I do after that ? I barely had a clue . And I had been so alone throughout all of this . When you 're young , and pretty , and talented , and bright everyone wants to be your friend . When you 're lost and confused , no one knows who you are . With help from no one , I was getting back to being someone people actually wanted to know . The dormitory was a converted mansion . It was an odd building . Heavy and dark , it looked as if someone had tried to build a set for a production of Wuthering Heights without ever having so much as seen a picture of England . The first floor was a series of rooms , a kitchen and several other rooms with seemingly no purpose . It was the middle of the day while classes were in session and the dormitory was almost empty , as I had hoped . I walked into one of the purposeless rooms that had an array of institutional furniture that seemed nearly random . An indestructible club chair . A table . A couple of dining chairs . In the corner , as I had recalled , was a pay phone . I dialed the phone number of the man I had met on New Year 's Eve . It was a long shot that he would even pick up the phone at that moment in the middle of the day , but he did . Without any introduction , I blurted out that I was pregnant , that I would probably have an abortion but male friends of mine had convinced me that it wasn 't fair that women make this decision on their own , so that if he wanted me to continue with the pregnancy we could talk about that . I had planned to add that he 'd have to want sole custody , but I can 't recall if I got that far . Then this man about whom I knew next to nothing except that he loved Kant and had a larger than average penis , launched into one of the more shocking speeches I had heard at that point in my life . He accused me of trying to trap him into marriage . His family were aristocrats . They would never accept this . I was just a common slut and I was trying to trap him into marriage . He was outraged . I 've been writing down my experiences as a way of understanding why I believe some of the things I believe and why I hold some of the political positions I do . This conversation resulted in me feeling somewhat skeptical of men 's rights advocates when they complain that it is not fair that they have no say in abortion decisions . It 's not that I feel that they are disingenuous about their own position , but that they don 't actually represent men in general . Most men , I suspect , don 't really want the responsibility that this decision entails . Women have abortions , men don 't . Women have to bear the responsibility and the stigma . Many men , perhaps most , would prefer to keep it this way . However , I think I did the ethical thing in approaching this man , and it was obvious that he would have preferred that I hadn 't . I don 't know his position on abortion , but he was a practicing Catholic . One word and I wouldn 't have had an abortion . I don 't think he wanted that responsibility . A while back , Dan Savage expressed the opinion that women should inform a man if they are going to have an abortion . I agree with everything he says , even the part that many feminists objected to , that the man 's desires should be taken into consideration . However , I think he is underestimating humans ' potential for denial and self - deception when he writes : There 's an interesting assumption that Savage makes here , that what they are dodging are child support payments and not custody of a child , because the only way I would have considered carrying that pregnancy to term is if the man had agreed to take full custody . I can 't be sure , but I strongly suspect that the man in question barely remembers this incident . He probably doesn 't acknowledge having dodged anything at all . It would be all to easy for him to rationalize it away . The incident changed the course of my life and I suspect it didn 't register for him at all . It was also my introduction to notions about social class . Growing up in suburbia in the United States in an environment in which people ranged from the upper end of stable working class families to the lower end of the professional upper middle class , I was only faintly aware of class differences that weren 't simply linked to income . I 've had a hatred for social class ever since . The school I 'd been attending for the two and a half years prior to that moment had approximately eight hundred students on a campus isolated in a rural area . I know some people who have turned inwards when they encountered social problems at school . They threw themselves into their work and excelled . I couldn 't do that for some reason . I was falling apart . I wanted , indeed needed , a friend . That I found this particular man physically desirable was a secondary interest to me . I rarely have lacked for lovers . I have on occasion lacked friends . The school I was attending had an unusually long winter break , ostensibly to allow time for independent research projects or internships . My first year there , I tried to arrange one only to find that no professor wanted the extra work . Almost no one else did one either . My sister 's school was back in session , and I decided to go visit her as part of my attempts to strengthen connections to people beyond my own little school . The man I had met on New Years Eve was attending a school that was accessible by commuter train not far from the school my sister was attending . In fact , on several occasion I had gone with her and some of her friends to that neighborhood for some of the nightlife there . The school was the top school in the country for the subject he was studying and had an additional appeal for him as well - the school was a Catholic university . While I was visiting my sister towards the end of January , I phoned and asked if I could visit . He said , " Yes . " However , when I arrived , I wondered if he had meant that yes . A couple of other friends were visiting and at times I had the distinct impression of being the third wheel , although there were four of us . At this remove , I can no longer recall details of the conversation , but I do recall having the uncomfortable feeling of receiving mixed messages as to whether or not I was wanted there and whether I should stay or go . It was awkward . Yet , at the same time , it seemed to be presumed I would be spending the night . At one point in the evening , the man said that he wanted to stop by the store located on campus to pick up a pack of cigarettes . When we got there , there was a line and one of his friends offered to give him some cigarettes from his own pack . " Thanks , " the man said , " but I want to get something else as well . " When we finally found ourselves at the counter , in addition to the cigarettes he asked for condoms . The clerk behind the counter replied that they didn 't sell them . The rooms of the dormitory were arranged in suites , with several rooms surrounding a common area . The man let his friends have his bed and we took some blankets and made an improvised bed on the floor of the common area . Alone , the awkwardness went away and I enjoyed his company again . We agreed that we would not have intercourse since we had been unable to buy condoms . Since I had enjoyed fondling him at the party so much , it seemed possible . In retrospect , it was an amazingly naive idea . Alone with a modicum of privacy and everyone else asleep , we did not stop at fondling . The following day , the four of us went to an art museum . At first , when they discussed going , I assumed that they would go without me and I would return to my sister 's . Then he specifically invited me . Yet , while I was with them , that feeling of awkwardness returned . On the way back to my sister 's , I couldn 't figure out if seeing him again had been a good idea or not , nor could I figure out if he was interested in me . It didn 't weigh on my mind too much . I concluded simply that , having extended myself once , that I wouldn 't do it again and wait and see if he contacted me . |
abaya I had a baby in Saudi The date was Jan 27th , 2016 . I had gone to bed a bit early and woke up about 11pm with pain in my belly . I laid there for about 30 minutes thinking to myself that it wouldn 't be long before I would be giving birth to my daughter . I was excited since I was already 40 weeks and one day . I was ready to hold her in my arms . I was feeling a little bit scared because I knew nothing of what was going to happen . First baby nervous . Does it get better or easier after the first one ? I got up and decided to keep busy for as long as I could . I wrote down the times when I felt each contraction start up . I was hitting the refresh button on Facebook and hand quilting my rooster quilt to keep myself occupied . I wondered to myself when I was going to get sleep next . I had no idea how long the labor would last . I finally woke my husband up around three am I think . I told him that I didn 't think he would be going to work that day . I enjoyed his excitement over my condition at the time . He was calm and collected . I told him that I didn 't want to be that person who would show up at the hospital only to be sent home because it wasn 't time yet . I think we waited till about 4 : 30am before we left the house . We decided to get some McDonald 's Egg Mcmuffin sandwiches ( they aren 't open at that hour ) before and even go walk around at the grocery store since we figured that it would be the only place open . They actually had the doors locked at Tamimis when we arrived . They are open 24 hours , but were putting stock out and cleaning floors so they had the doors locked . We went and sat in the car for a bit and then my husband went to approach an employee who had come out to smoke . He straight up told the guy that I was in labor and we just wanted to walk around inside . So the guy lets us in the roam the aisles of the grocery store ( and use the toilet ) while I had contractions every 4 - 7 minutes . That will always be a good memory . Arriving at the hospital for the birth of a baby involves getting checked in at the emergency room first . Strange to me , but whatever . Then they take you up to the birthing floor to be checked out . Turns out I was only dilated maybe one or two centimeters . After being monitored for contractions and fetal heartbeat for an hour , they told us to go home . It was too early . They told us to come back if the pain got worse , or there was blood , or water . Specific , yet vague instructions for a return trip . Turns out , I was that girl who arrived too early and got sent home . McDonald 's was open at this time , so I finally got my breakfast sandwiches on the way home . I don 't really remember much of that Thursday . Only that the contractions remained around 3 to 7 minutes apart all day and just kept getting stronger . I was able to get in a much needed nap after being up all night . We just chilled at home , and around eleven PM , we headed back to the hospital . The pain had definitely increased and I didn 't know what level to expect for hard labor . This time I was wheeled up to the birthing floor in a wheel chair as part of protocol . Again I was checked out and monitored to see how things were progressing . And again I was told to go back home . I felt rather frustrated at this point because the pain seemed more intense , yet I hadn 't even dilated much at all . Again they gave me instructions regarding my return to the hospital . If there was water , blood or the pain was worse . I think I asked how much worse the pain should be and they said intolerable . Another reason for sending us home was that the insurance was only going to pay for a certain amount of time outside of the delivery , so me staying there early on would have been money out of pocket . I was crying out in pain on the way home this time . There was no sleeping for me this time once I got home . My husband was able to get some rest , but my contractions couldn 't be slept though . I think I woke my husband up around 3 : 30 am Friday morning . I was crying from the pain at this point , and there had been fresh colored blood along with the mucus plug . This gave me hope that I had in fact dilated more during the night . So off to the hospital once again ! I remember very little cars being on the road this go around . My husband was speeding and even ran a red light because there was no one else on the road . He had said we were staying this time even if they suggested we go home . He even thought maybe if we didn 't hurry we would have to name our daughter Elantra , after the car she would be born in . The wheelchair ride to the birthing floor was a little bit funny . I would have laughed had I not been crying in pain . The nurse pushing me kept saying " no no no , not yet . " I had to tell her I wasn 't having the baby , just a contraction . I get up to the room and get checked out only to discover I 'm only four centimeters dilated . I was so unbelievably frustrated and concerned because I was really reaching a pain level that was too much . But this time they admitted me . They hooked me up once again to the monitors and would come back in the room periodically to check on things . I couldn 't get over the pain level . I should mention at this point that I had no desire to get an epidural . I didn 't want any pain medications really . I was thinking I would get the gas to breath between contractions and a last resort I would probably be willing to get the pethedine to ease the pain . I had my fears that I wouldn 't be able to do this on my own and that I would have to get a C - Section because of drugs that I was given . I wanted to avoid all of that . I was relieved to be in labor at this time , because they wanted to induce me the following week if I hadn 't had the baby , and that wasn 't something I wanted either . Back to the delivery room : They had put me on oxygen at this point . And I 'm not sure what time they did it , but they gave me a shot of pethedine at one point . Its supposed to ease the pain , but you will still feel everything . I am still of the opinion that it didn 't do sh * * for me . I remember thinking " okay , twenty minutes and I 'll start feeling better . " It didn 't do anything ! Little did I know that my husband had noticed that the contractions were registering around twenty on the monitor before the shot , and after the shot , they had gone up to eighty and ninety . After some time the Dr . came in and asked me about getting an epidural . I at this point was glad she mentioned it and was all about hearing what she had to say regarding the procedure . My husband however was like , hey no one has checked on her in a couple hours . I think she needs to be checked on . He knew I didn 't want the epidural of course and he stepped in to be my voice of reason in a time when I was out of my head . The Dr . then checks me out and tells me that I am going to start pushing and will have a baby in twenty minutes . I was thinking really ? I don 't have the desire to push . I don 't know how to push . And I sure as heck was scared of the pain level that I hadn 't had yet . But pushing time was on , so … The Dr goes to get changed and comes back and tells me to push every time I have a contraction . I 'm telling you , I had no idea what I was doing . She would give me instructions , and I would tearfully tell her I was trying . Putting a catheter in she tells me that " that takes care of that problem . " ( I had peed a little during a push . It had bothered me to not get a warning at least . If you have never had a catheter put in , they don 't feel good . She wasn 't about to be all kind about things either , she was very to the point and businesslike at this point . Like a drill sergeant , telling me , to stop crying and push ! Or stop yelling and push ! And put your hands on those bars and push ! I didn 't even know if I was pushing right . I just wanted to baby to be out at this point . I wasn 't about to keep quiet when I started to feel her giving me an episiotomy . I had mentally prepared myself for it to happen at some point ( was told months before that it was procedure for first time births ) . Is mentally preparing oneself even possible to do when it comes to your genital area ? I think not . I think I had maybe three more pushes after that . At one point I had a cheering section of the Dr , my husband and the five or six nurses all yelling push ! Push ! At the same time . Finally with a great sense of relief , our little daughter came into the world at about 7 : 20am on Friday , January 29th . I am grateful for the fairly short labor . Wednesday night , to Friday morning really isn 't too bad in my opinion . But I was also very exhausted at that point too . I didn 't even have any fight in me to protest the nurses taking the baby to the nursery right away , when in fact she should have been on me . Thankfully after getting stitched up , they brought her back into the room . I had planned to breastfeed exclusively and felt that the sooner she was on me the better . Two hours after having the baby , I was able to be moved to the recovery room . The nurse wanted me to put on my abaya . I thought , and said out loud … " I just had a baby , I 'm not putting on an abaya ! " So she grabbed the blanket off the bed and covered me up with it . The recovery rooms were nice . A nice bed for me and a pull out chair bed for my husband to use . The food wasn 't terrible either . The constant flow of nurses or cleaning ladies was a bit too much though . The nurses from the nursery would also come in from time to time to take the baby " to check her vitals " . I would get annoyed if she was gone too long . I had informed them not to feed her , but they kept asking me if they could , even arguing with me at one point because they said she would get hungry if she didn 't have enough from me . " that 's why her and I need to work together at this " I had said in response . The learning part wasn 't immediate , but I was one determined mamma ! Turns out that during those vitals checks at one point , she was being vaccinated . Good thing I wasn 't one of those anti vaxers because they never informed me or asked about vaccinations for my baby until we were getting discharged the following day , after they had already given her shots . I still get a little annoyed by it though . I was one very happy lady when I got discharged the day after giving birth ! I so wanted to just get home and start working on getting our own routines as a family . Three weeks later , we are still working on that . Every day seems to be something new and I 'm okay with it . My story is a bit long here , but I do need to add one more thing before I close . You know how I mentioned the catheter the Dr . put in ? Well the first night at home , about 3am , I woke my husband up again to inform him this time that I probably needed to go back to the hospital because I had a UTI ! Of all things , A UTI on top of just giving birth wasn 't my idea of a good time . But I knew my body well enough to know what was happening and I blamed the Catheter being the reason for this . I didn 't want to get put on antibiotics with a brand new baby though , so after some talking and looking on the Internets , I decided to try to eliminate the UTI naturally with cranberry juice , lemon juice , baking soda , eating certain foods , whatever would work and not cause the baby to get anything unwanted through the breast milk . My efforts were not successful however . After five days I woke up feeling lower back pain and really had had enough . Back to the hospital we went . A nurse asked us if we had someone at home to take care of the baby cause the air in the ER wasn 't good for a newborn . I might have snapped a little bit in response to that . It 's not like I had wanted to be there ! I wanted drugs to clear up the infection and to be sent home ! My white blood cell count turned out to be over 100 ( I guess its supposed to be under 10 ) so they said I had to be admitted . Tearfully I asked if my baby could stay with me and they said yes , so I agreed to stay . Ended up staying in the hospital the whole weekend ! I needed antibiotics and fluids to get me hydrated . They had to hook my IV up to a machine to push it through , since my little vein kept closing up . At least I didn 't have an issue with my blood clotting . But I had to push a button every time I needed to pee so that I could be unhooked , and then when they hooked me back up , they usually had to flush the vein to open in back up . You might think that I would have been able to get rest at least . Not the case , as the flow of nurses and cleaning crews were again a constant duriI am once again grateful for the continued healing and hope to be back to myself soon . I still have some pain that I hope will diminish in the next couple weeks . We are still learning every day here , and enjoying the process even if it involves tears on my end at times , because I am just exhausted or I 'm hurting or just don 't know what to do to make my baby stop crying . We are thankful and totally in love with our little girl . Being Pregnant I can hardly believe the year is almost up . Its amazing what has changed in just a matter of months . My husband and I celebrated a year of marriage , and took three vacations that required flying , along with a closer to home vacation a few hours away . I have made the one year in Saudi milestone . We have had some trying moments along the way too . I have wanted a number of times , to just leave this place , and my husband didn 't always know what to do in those situations . He was close to putting me on a plane a few times with a one way ticket . But we made it through all that and add a growing baby ( not yet born ) to the mix , and its been pretty eventful ! I 'm almost done brewing the little one . She is due to arrive late January . She takes up more and more space everyday as well . Not just in the womb , but also outside too , as we are now in the process of adding little baby clothes in pretty feminine patterns , and tiny stuffed animals that are just adorable are being added to our lives . Being pregnant has been such a strange and cool experience . I think some days as of late , I want to be done . But I also , wonder if I will then miss it once its over . My husband has been such a support through it all . Taking me to appointments , going out to get me ice cream , or cheeseburgers when it 's actually his bed time . Two nights ago , he didn 't even complain or argue about his need for sleep on a work night as I lay in bed wide awake , instead he and I talked about stuff and held hands while the little one bounced around inside of me . This was NEVER going to go in our home , but we had a good laugh over it . We didn 't necessarily laugh over the talks where my husband just wants to use a cardboard box for the baby on top of a deep freezer . We don 't even own a deep freezer , but he sees this as an opportunity to get one . That to me is trashy and ridiculous , and our baby doesn 't need to sleep in a box ! I can 't help myself , when I want to get a normal crib that I will not have to deal with issues like , rolling , falling or starting to pull oneself up . Clothing . ah such cute little clothes ! Everything for a baby seems to be so darn expensive . But I have done quite a bit of looking , and have found some cheaper options here in the city we live in . They might not be the best quality , but if they are just being worn for a couple months before being grown out of , it 'll do . As for me , I 'm wearing a few items of clothing out myself . I have been enjoying a life of maxi skirts , leggings , and tank tops . Going out in leggings is not something I would ever do back home in the States . I find modesty to be quite lacking while wearing leggings outside of the house , unless said wearer is also wearing a long enough top or dress over them . So , the fact that I have to wear an abaya when I go out , solves that one right there . The general public has no clue what in underneath my black dress . I have also enjoyed my maternity clothes too . I don 't dress casual everyday . I have a feeling that even after the baby arrives , the maternity jeans will still be worn for a bit . But speaking of clothes for the baby … Look at the incredible baby shower in a box that my mother in law sent over ! So incredibly blessed to have this as a starting point for dressing our little girl . I love the colors that were picked out . And the little animal feet on the pants in the middle of the picture made my husband use the word " adorbs " . Love it ! I 've had such a great appetite ( second trimester , on … ) and have put on some pounds . Some days it has made me feel quite self conscious , but I have tried not to let it get to me too much . I have had an unusual love for sweets , desserts , and candy . When my candy stash is getting low , I am looking for more . Okay , every trip to the grocery store I find something that needs to be had . Last night it was Reese 's Peanut Butter Cups . Those large old fashioned lolly pops are good too . Jelly Belly 's , Runts , oh , and cake . I love cake . The down side to some of this incredible appetite has been some incredible heartburn . Holy cow ! I brought a thing of Tums with me from the States while I was there in the summer . I think there are two left and I have two months of pregnancy left . I had to stop relying on them since I knew I couldn 't get more here . But the Dr has given me some other prescription to take , so that has helped tremendously . I 'm still dealing with the anxiety of having a baby far from my home country . Its been okay so far . I 've cried a few times , thinking I might be slightly insane to do this . There are still things I don 't understand about how things are done here , but the way it looks , I should be okay . I mean , women have babies all the time here . This is a baby making place ! I think I will switch my Dr this next week , as I haven 't seen my original Dr in over a month due to vacation time when I go in , and the one I have been seeing has felt a bit more comfortable , as she explains things to me in more detail . I like details . I like information . Not just " everything will be fine " . I don 't imagine doing this without some pain management . It looks like laughing gas is the preferred method here . When I asked my first Dr about drug options for birth , she mentioned that she had given two epidurals . So , yeah , no one who has done this twice , goes anywhere near my spine ! Perhaps the topic will be covered again once I am closer to my due date . Between now and then , I guess a little more internet research will be done . I hate internet research on some topics , because the exposure to the terrible side of things is right there with the good and its a balance act as far as what a person can then trust . My husband would tell me to not to look up information on the subject matter , but he is not the one who is going to push our little girl out of his _______ . My husband and I went to Bahrain for the weekend . When we got there it was a bit chilly to me , so I didn 't take off my abaya right away . Was sort of wearing it like a jacket . It was actually raining and in the 80 's ( F ) , but that made it feel a bit colder . We went to the liquor store to get some beers , and as we were walking up to the door we both were commenting on the fact that I still had the abaya on . As soon as we got inside I was confronted by security . Abayas are not allowed . We had a good laugh over that as I got kicked out for wearing it . The weekend was very chill and nothing over the top , as we stayed at a friend 's house and ate good food , and just relaxed . Here are some photos of pottery that I think are just lovely . And a random photo of fabric with circles , because I 'm a bit obsessed with circles . Sunday , was back to work for my husband . I woke up and realized that I had caught a cold over the weekend . The second hottest country in the world , and I had a cold . Yes , I am aware that it has nothing to do with weather , but I just wanted to throw that out there . On Monday , the temps got up to 104 ( F ) . On Tuesday a friend of mine invited me to go to the beach , so despite my runny nose and fatigue , I joined her . It was nice to get out for the day and enjoy a change of scenery . It is important for me to point out that this was my first time since moving here to do something without my husband for a day . In the States it would be taken for granted . My ability to just go and do something without him could happen at any time back at home . Here , not so easy or often does that happen . We got to enjoy the afternoon sitting in the sun , eating sandwiches and chips , or " crisps " as my friend calls them . That evening we met up with my husband at the market . Him and I had a few things we needed for dinner the next night as we were going to have guests over for dinner . He mentioned that a roast sounded good . After a brief conversation about my ability to cook a roast , it was settled . At the meat counter I spotted the cut that looked good and told him what I wanted . My husband started laughing and explaining quite loudly in the store … " yeah , baby … way to be decisive ! " Turns out , the cut of meat was quite pricey . 269 Saudi Riyals ! Divide that by 3 . 75 and you get the US dollar amount . It was only the next day that I realized I had a bit of pressure on me to make that turn out well . I was a bit nervous that I might ruin it . I stuck the meat full of garlic cloves . I also mixed together a dry rub with a healthy amount of cyan pepper , salt , pepper , dry peppers , garlic powder , and cinnamon , and then I hoped for the best as it cooked for three hours in the oven . Backing up just a little bit … I had done a bit of cleaning before the guests had arrived . This included washing the floors . I don 't wash the floors that often , since the dust is never ending here . Our guests had actually laughed because a sand storm was headed our way . They had told us that the following day it was due to hit . I heard a strange noise outside that evening ( I don 't know how to describe it ) , and by the time the guests were about to leave , I looked outside the kitchen window to see nothing . All the lights and buildings in the distance were no longer visible . The Storm had already arrived , and it was by far the worst one I had ever seen in my life . The howling winds lasted all night and by morning , the inside of our apartment was covered in a layer of sand and dust . Everything was covered . All the cleaning I had done the day before had been laughed at by Mother Nature , and desert winds . I felt inspired to create this illustration for a little bit of cheer and positive thinking … Also , I can 't really describe the smell that permeated my nose . Even with the cold and stuffed up head , all I could smell was sand . It was a burning smell to me . And to be honest I don 't enjoy that at all . I also felt like the elements had won the next morning , as I sat down for coffee and decided that I really wasn 't going to clean at all that day . Luckily my husband came home early from work and tackled the majority of the filth on his own . I just didn 't have the energy . Yesterday the sky was blue again and the weather , lovely . We got out of the house for a bit and wandered around the mall . I have always been a bit surprised by some of the shoes here . I think I will take more photos as I find them , but here a few to show you . I guess it surprises me that the impractical and gaudy shoes are so readily available in the land o ' sand . These are just a tiny portion of some of the crazy ones that I see . I 'm very thankful that my frugal husband goes to certain gas stations when the car needs a fill up . He usually brings home 3 - 4 boxes of free tissue with each fill up . That my friends … comes in handy when you have a cold ! It 's about that time again when I give you all an update on my life here in Saudi … We had a pretty good weekend , actually , I will say it was great ! There is something incredibly calming about being able to just relax and see a new place , and hang out with friends . It overrides the negative crap in my head for a while . Something that is both needed and very much cherished here in the desert . At least for me … Thursday evening , we met up with friends at the grocery store to get food for the next day 's BBQ we had planned . We got our supplies and then headed to my favorite place for Shawarma 's . We then went to a nearby park to eat , since the restaurant has no family section . The weather has been really great so , the park was very full of families with their children . Friday we got on the road about 8ish , and drove to this hidden gem along the beach . This place provided us with a sense of NORMAL life for the day . We shed our abayas , and the rules of Saudi , and just had a great day relaxing in the sun , feet in the sand , cold malt ( alcohol free ) beverage in our hands . And the men grilled meat for dinner , on little grills that were available for us to use . The kids and adults all had a good time . It was such a breath of fresh air . And I 'm sure that everyone got home that night very tired , but a good sort of tired . On Saturday we had another guest over for dinner . Our guest brought all the food and cooked it up in our kitchen . I didn 't have to do a thing ! And it was super delicious . Bok choy , steak and rice . I will have to see if he wants to cook for us again , he can . Then after dinner we headed to the Eco Park . Half the park is still blocked off to pedestrians for some reason , but once again it was teeming with people enjoying the weather . The first time I had been to the park , the water fountain was empty of water and looked to be under construction . I had a desire to see the fountain in action while here , and I got to see it that night . The water was flowing and after dusk , the fountain came to life . It used to be the world 's largest fountain at one time . The water shoots up 73 meters according to what I have found on the Internet about it . We were quite surprised to find that it was set to music . Public music here is Haram ( meaning it 's sinful or forbidden to some Muslims ) but I guess once again , the rules are meant to be broken ! Oh , … I almost forgot to mention that also , a surprise to me was seeing female workers at the park picking up trash ! This is a first for me to see . I 've only seen men doing this sort of work before . The women had their hair covered , but they were wearing pants . Not an abaya . Bring it on … ! I want to add twenty exclamation points . I was able to play around with my camera a bit and get a few good shots , then figure out the video . So here is some visual entertainment for you to go along with my story of the weekend . One week I feel great , and am explaining how I have gotten used to the abaya . The next week , I 'm a total mess . Okay , maybe at times it can be broken down by hours , not weeks . And maybe a total mess is really just a nice way of saying that I may have just gone manic . Giving up my flip flops because we ( the ladies in the group ) had all worn high heels and did touristy stuff that required a lot of walking . I think the ambassador 's wife needed a break from the heels as well , and I didn 't have the heart or the nerve to tell her she had my shoes on . It was a really funny moment . I 'll never forget it . I need to warn you that the first part of this entry is not pleasant ! The weekend started out like most weekends here . My husband and I always have new energy on Thursday nights since it starts the weekend and we never really know what kind of fun we can have for a couple days . We had a few errands to run before we headed out of town for a trip to Jeddah to attend a wedding . I needed to return a dress that I had decided against , and my husband needed to pick up some clothes that he had dropped off for repairs . The return of the dress went pretty smoothly and I was able to explain that I didn 't want the dress without anyone understanding a word of the other 's language . Then they gave me a credit towards the store and motioned for me to go shopping . I didn 't need anything right away , so I was able to get the cash back after asking a few questions and a few more gestures regarding the credit receipt . Then my husband and I headed to the old town to pick up some alterations . Being a Thursday night here , the streets were bustling with people and cars . I decided to wait in the car for my husband to walk maybe a half block to the shop and back . He left and just a minute went by and I glance over and see this guy who seems to just be " adjusting " himself . I mean , most men at some point or another have to do this … so no big deal . Keep in mind , I am directly in front of a large fish market and there are pedestrians everywhere . I look about and then glance back towards the store front and the same guy mentioned before is there again , looking at me and then I notice he is not " adjusting " himself at all ! He is getting himself off , exposing himself , right there while staring at me ! I instantly panicked ! I locked the doors and instantly grabbed my scarf to " hide " myself . I kept checking the side mirrors to know where the man was , as he kept walking around the truck and around a few other cars in the area . He probably made it around the truck five times before my husband made it back . My husband gets in and asksI really wish this had not happened to me , or any other woman for that matter , but the sad truth is , there are some sick beings in this world . I am thankful the situation was not worse , and I have learned that if it were to happen again , I need to cause a serious scene and get as much attention as possible . And I will no longer just wait in the truck by myself in areas like that . We left the house early on Friday and headed to Dammam Airport for the trip . Morning traffic here is always much calmer . Thankfully there wasn 't an issue with fog that morning . The airport was pretty calm as well , since we were only flying domestic . Getting on the plane was different due to the fact that a quarter of the passengers were men in preparation for Umrah . Umrah is a Muslim pilgrimage to the city of Mecca for Muslims during non - Haj months . From what I have read about it , clothing worn during this time can 't have seams . The men getting on the plane were wearing towels . Just towels . One wrapped around the waist and another over the shoulders . Seeing men dressed in a way that is far less modest from the traditional thobes was very different . I have to say , that after the previous night 's experience , I felt a little grossed out . I couldn 't help it , but I kept it to myself . About half way through the flight , I look up to see a guy in the row behind us doing CPR on an older gentleman who was passed out . I thought that the plane was turning back at this point to go back to the airport . The flight attendants did a great job keeping the man on oxygen the rest of the flight and we actually ended up flying the rest of the way to Jeddah . Once the plane had landed and the EMT crew was on board , one of the daughters of the man sat down next to my husband and explained to us that her father had recent heart surgeries and that they were not going to get to go on Umrah at this point . She so kindly expressed her concern that she hoped we weren 't late to our own thing , while her own father was on the brink of death . Once again , I was so thankful that the situation was not worse , and that the man seemed to be stable as we got off the plane . My husband was able to negotiate a lesser fee with a non - official " taxi " driver to find our hotel from the airport . Turns out , that first driver was the nicest of all the taxi drivers we had while in Jeddah . The Hotel ( actually a one bedroom apartment with a living room ) was really nice . We took a much needed rest and then headed out to the corniche on the Red Sea to enjoy the setting sun . Our walk took us along a street filled with large sculptures and grassy areas occupied by families enjoying picnics . We weren 't lost , we were exploring ! J We ended up walking quite a bit that evening in what seemed to be 95 ( F ) degree heat and 80 % humidity . By the time we decided to get a taxi back to the hotel , we were both drenched in sweat and very thirsty ! The kind taxi driver gave us a small bottle of water to drink . We must have looked pretty miserable . We then got ready for the wedding that evening . It didn 't start until 9 : 30 P . M . We are usually ready to call it a day by that hour , so this was very outside our normal routine . We got all dressed up and hailed another taxi . We arrived at the wedding , and while my husband knew the groom , I didn 't know a single person there . One of the groom 's friends came out to meet us and show me where to go . There I was left to go inside by myself and attend the wedding , Saudi style . Women in one part of the building , and the men in a completely separate part . I went in and stood in the entrance for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do . I 'm pretty sure I was shaking with nervousness . A sister of the groom finally spotted me and told me where to check my abaya ( events like this allow the women to be abaya - free , since there are no men around ) and where to sit . The hall was decorated and all fancy with tea , Arabic coffee , chocolates , and cookies on the hundred or more tables . My new guide seated me in the front of the room near the stage by myself ! Already out of my comfort zone , I really started feeling even more uncomfortable . I tried the Arabic coffee and some chocolates to keep myself busy while more female guests arrived . A cousin of the groom was eventually " sent " over to chat with me for a bit . She was nice and spoke English . I used the word sent , because it was quite obvious to me that since I was the only white girl there , the English speaking relative , was told to go keep my company for a bit . She explained that the groom 's mother would sit by the entrance to the hall and greet guests until maybe two in the morning , that the groom would arrive around three - thirty in the morning and that everyone else would probably not leave until four A . M ! We were both quite shy and didn 't really know what to say to each other . She made her escape shortly afterwards , telling me she needed to go speak with her mother . The table where I sat started filling up with other women at that point , all of whom sat at the More women started arriving to the table where I was and even started greeting me . I shook a few hands , told them my name and said nice to meet you , even though none of them told me their own names . They just smiled and greeted me in words I couldn 't understand . After a few of these , I noticed that the women are greeting with hugging and kissing ( I was counting the number of kisses on the cheeks as I observed ) and in my awkward position I decided that I should at least return the greetings with a little more than a handshake . Oh my , even with the previous counting , you can never tell who will give you one kiss on the cheek or one kiss on one , and three on the other side and so forth ! I still don 't know the proper way to greet a Saudi woman ! J The variety of dresses was pretty amazing - so many beautiful gowns . The styles ranged from super formal to casual . But all the faces were cloaked in heavy makeup , and even I had put on a little more than I normally would ! Out in public I see women every day , covered up , and all you see are eyes . Here I got to see what they look like underneath the abaya and facial coverings . I would say this evening was the closest thing to " real Saudi " so far in my time here . At one point I heard someone at the table say " excuse me " , so I looked over and got an eye - roll and the toss of a head to the side . At this point I was even more nervous , because I in no way intended to give the impression that I was being stuck up ! I told myself that while these ladies may have been judging me by what they saw , they didn 't have any idea of who I am , nor do they know that I am honestly just a very uncomfortable stranger who happened to be invited to their space ! Maybe they were also a bit nervous like me . I sat there , drinking Arabic coffee for what seemed to be a really long time , looking around the room , smiling at strangers , wondering what it was like for my husband on the other side , and finally grabbed by bag to go use the ladies room . The cousin who had chatted with me earlier stopped me on the way and demanded to know where I was going . I think she thought I was leaving , so I told her the ladies room , and grabbed up my too - long dress so I wouldn 't trip and make an even bigger fool of myself and went to find the ladies toilet . In the ladies room I hiked up my dress even more as to not get it wet on the floors . I was thinking to myself , how do they do this in such fancy dresses without getting them soiled ? You see , the floors are always wet in the ladies rooms , and most times , there aren 't any western toilets . Only squatters . The damn squatters . Many times there is actually a bathroom attendant who mops the floors and cleans the bathrooms in the larger public facilities . I just happen to be the type who feels hesitant as to the nature of any wet floors when I am in a bathroom ! Perhaps I am stuck up after all . J So there I am , grabbing up my dress and tucking it into the top of my dress to avoid it making contact with the floor , while the chain from my evening bag gets caught in my hair as I try to keep it from also hitting the floor . It would have made anyone laugh to see it ! I was able to comfortably check my phone while taking my break from the festivities and discovered that my husband had sent me a message saying they are finished on the guy 's side ! I 'm thinking " what ? It hasn 't even started over here yet ! I feel like I have been here for hours . " He told me he will meet me outside if I want to , so I go retrieved my abaya and I made my escape . I went to a Saudi wedding , but I didn 't stay for the whole thing . Leaving just before midnight , I didn 't lose my slipper on the stairs . The men had eaten a great feast and had pretty much only talked and drank the same Arabic coffee , while I had sat for an eternity not knowing what to do , how to behave , or what would happen next . No pictures were allowed from my side , but my husband got a few . J I 'm glad I went . It was probably the most uncomfortable cultural thing I have ever done , besides moving to Saudi ! I was scared , dressed up for a party and yet I couldn 't hang till 4 A . M ! I 'll most likely never see any of those faces again , so luckily I shouldn 't have to explain my sudden exit . I had fun explaining the evening to my husband who was a little bummed that I hadn 't at least taken a sketch pad with me to draw what I was seeing ( you know , like they do in court rooms that don 't allow cameras ) . Maybe next time . The next morning I felt like I had a hangover from all the Arabic coffee that I had consumed combined with dehydration from walking so much . We didn 't get a chance to see much of Jeddah this time around , as it was a short trip , and my husband had to go back to work on Sunday . We packed up our things and got a taxi to head to the airport Saturday morning . This final taxi driver refused to turn on the meter when asked , and seemed very unfriendly . We had a near accident as we came upon another accident , but luckily he was able to slam on the brakes in time to avoid the suddenly stopped car in our lane . I think we came within an inch of the other car , as our driver burned a layer of rubber off of the tires . My husband asked him how long he had lived in Saudi . He was from Bangladesh , and had been here 20 years . When asked if he liked it , he quickly said " No ! " I was thinking to myself " there is your sign , man . You have been in the desert for too long . It 's time for you to go home ! " We drove up the ramp along the highway and suddenly there are wheelbarrow tires lying everywhere in our lane . A quick swerve was enough that time , and when we topped the ramp there was a man running down the road to get his tires that had fallen from his truck . You never know what you will see here ! And that my friends , is my story from this past weekend … It 's been a month and two days here in Saudi . I have to admit that each day is getting better . I had a rough one month anniversary and really just didn 't want to be here that day . I didn 't want to leave for good . It was just a day of overwhelming reflection I guess , mixed with the unknown of what my future holds for me while here . I am so grateful for the support from my husband in this journey . He doesn 't always know what to do in those moments while I struggle , but he is trying his best and that 's all that matters . Our social life is expanding as of late . It 's so interesting to meet new people and share stories , and time together . Having people over for dinner and spending time with others on the weekends really has been such a boost for my mood and outlook here . It 's so important to have the contact with others in the desert . Without it , I think I would go mad . I actually have a legitimate smart phone for the first time in my life , so now I can chat with others ! What ? ! ! ? ! Meet a couple who have been here for five years . He is from Michigan , she from New Zealand . She wore a head scarf when we met up and I asked her if she wore it all the time . She told me that in the five years , she has not worn it twice and both times got reprimanded by the Mutawa ( religious police ) . It 's so strange that not once have I been called out in the time I have been here , yet another woman can have such a different experience with it . I have only covered my head twice now since I 've been here , and both times has been out of the convenience of not wanting the wind whipping my hair around my face . We meet another couple also , she was born in Russia and her husband is from Oklahoma . She has yet another opinion about it . She wears it loosely just in case and yet she also does not go out without her husband in public . I have been told a few times that I shouldn 't but opinions range , and I will continue to go out without my husband as long as I am here and able . It 's not my style to stay indoors ALL the time . She has only been here a few days longer than me , so meeting her and talking about our lives here up to this point was such a breath of fresh air for me . I haven 't yet met an American woman and had the same conversation about it ( covering hair ) . I have met a few American women recently , but they live on compounds and don 't have to cover while inside the gates . While I was on the compound myself , it felt strange but also nice to not have my abaya on for a period of time . Guess I have been getting used to wearing it . I went on a road trip out to the middle of more sand this past weekend with my husband . We just got it the truck and drove west . We saw thousands of camels along the way and one large group was close enough to the road for me to get a few nice shots of them just hanging out . It 's exciting to me every time to see them out . We ended up in this small town that I can 't remember the name of . It seemed to be a town that catered to the camel herders as there were many trucks full of hay and there was even a trailer factory that made mobile trailers for the herders to live in while in the desert . My husband 's advice that day was to tell me that if I ever get lost in the desert and spot a camel , I need to follow it , because it will always go back to its home . I had the mental image of tapping one on its hind leg and asking " hey mister … . mind if we just hang out ? " I was able to finish the baby quilt that I had mentioned in my previous post . This is my first ever hand pieced , and quilted blanket . I plan to give this away to an expat here that is expecting . I had the orange fabric that I had brought with me and then the other fabrics I found at a store that was selling everything at low prices because they wanted to start a grocery store instead . Shirt fabric works just fine for quilts , and since I haven 't found batting , I used a fleece throw for a substitute . We are having more dinner guests over tonight so that meant a trip to the store for two more plates to make the serving set 6 . I 've already prepared a dessert and my husband and I are cooking spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner . In a couple days we are having a Thanksgiving get together at another couples home . Really looking forward to Thursday and whatever it may bring us ! I miss my family back in the States . And to my friends back home … I miss you all too . Happy Thanksgiving week ! |
She has been through a lot of relationships in the past few years , and most of them have ended badly , and it has left her disaffected . For a while she was happy this way , but she met a girl who made her smile and laugh , and she hasn 't felt that way about anyone in years . And almost every day since they started dating she keeps saying , " I don 't want to fuck this up . " Over and over . This is one time she won 't be happy if it turns out to be a disaster . She knows a boy who almost never talks , except to his girlfriend . They have been dating for years . He always just smiles when someone talks to him , and laughs a quiet little laugh . But mostly no one tries anymore , and mostly he just listens . Sometimes he interjects something completely unexpected . He sometimes takes care of the kittens of a girl he knew in college , who lives alone in a studio downtown . She worries that she isn 't social enough ; after work she just comes home and reads stories on the internet . It makes her feel happy and not alone in a world where everything seems so superficial , to know that there are real people with real stories out there . She just met a boy who is quiet and introverted but wants to go on adventures , and he likes her a lot and isn 't sure how to say it . He thinks she likes him , too , but he is afraid that if he makes a misstep it will all fall apart . Things fall apart on him often enough as it is without his help . And tonight he has had a few too many drinks and he is writing her an email that begins with " I don 't want to fuck this up . " The talking heads on the TV are telling us there 's been a large scale breakdown of social order . There 's rioting and looting everywhere , and cities are on fire , and it 's not safe to be near civilization anymore . In the places where there 's still law they 're trying to make the evacuations as orderly as possible , but the huge lines are just turning violent everywhere . They are telling us we need to run or hide or prepare . Lock everything down , make sure we have food and everything we 'll need . They have an expert on saying it 's only going to get worse from here . We have to be ready . We have to prepare . And then there 's pictures and video , and reporters on the scene with all the devastation and the violence . And they 're all saying they 've never seen anything like this , and the people they interview are saying they 're scared and confused and angry . Where is the government for all this ? But we just made popcorn and my girlfriend 's asleep on my shoulder , and some days it 's hard to worry about anything else . Outside , the city is on fire both literally and figuratively but nobody 's bothered us here . When we finally lost power , I spent most of the night just sitting in the dark . I 'd bought candles and I had plenty of batteries for my flashlights , but they 're just sitting there on the coffee table , unopened . I probably won 't open them before power gets back on . It 's peaceful , just sitting here , listening to the wind howling , wrapped in my blankets . Sometimes thinking , but mostly just sitting . I 'm not waiting for anything . I 'd be happy if this could last forever . I got a phone call from an old friend - - the sort of old friend that you don 't talk to anymore but you think about all the time , wondering why you don 't talk . The sort you try not to think about anymore . The sort I 'd almost succeeded at not thinking about . She wanted to know if I was okay , if I 'd lost power , if I needed a place to stay . I didn 't know why she thought that now was a good time to call , but I told her I was fine . In all the times we 'd talked I don 't think I 'd ever been sincere when I said that before , but tonight I really was . And when I told her I hoped she had a good day I really meant it . You can still see the fire from the refugee camps . It 's a constant glow on the horizon , and of course there 's smoke . I didn 't think that much smoke was possible . I guess I should probably be upset that everything I own was destroyed . I packed a little bag of things before I escaped , but it 's not much . Just whatever I could grab . The property damage and loss of life is incredible . Sometimes I 'll be awake when a fireman comes back into the camp , and he says he doesn 't think the fire 's ever going to stop . It 'll just keep burning and burning . But there 's something really pretty about it all , and I was feeling so alone in that town . It 's probably just ash and cinders now . I 'm not alone here . They like me here at the camp because I have a dark sense of humor and I don 't get discouraged by the reports we keep hearing . I make them smile . And there 's a girl whose whole life got destroyed who talks to me about it . About how she used to have problems , and now they 're gone , and she 's not sure what to think . Tonight , before she went to sleep , she said that she felt hopeful because of me . The fires are still burning and everything I 've ever known or loved is gone , but tonight I 'm actually smiling . I don 't remember the last time I really smiled . I never asked her about her bruises . She caught me looking once , and adjusted her skirt so they weren 't visible anymore . She didn 't say anything about it and neither did I . There was a story there , just like there 's a story to everything . It was probably trivial . Fell down drunk at a party , perhaps . The important thing was I never asked . That 's a story that I would never know . There 's probably hundreds of those . Most of it I have no reason to know . But it 's there , and I was curious , but I couldn 't ask . I felt like it might be intrusive , which seems like a bad reason . She could always say no . Or she could let me in . We could share that little story . It could be our secret . Or it could have been nothing at all . I 'll never know . The only moment we shared is one where neither of us acknowledged it at all , which mostly just makes me feel lonely . It 's so trivial and I could have said it without any fear of repercussions . It would have been so easy . Every day this past week I 've left home cheerful and optimistic , ready to take on the world . And every day I 've come home exhausted and defeated , curling up on my bed to sleep my troubles away . Usually I skip dinner . It 's never anything particularly dreadful . It 's the little things . The small annoyances that you can forget about while you 're asleep and showering in the morning , and those little petty things people can do to make each other miserable . Sometimes they do it to me , sometimes to other people . The worst is when I catch myself doing it . Making a face at the cashier for being slow , or rolling my eyes at the girl with the umbrella taking up the whole sidewalk . Making a biting remark to a customer at work . I 'm exhausted well before it 's time to go home , and my mood is quick to follow . The rest of the day seems tedious . And then I sleep and something about the rest makes me forget what was bothering me . I just think that it must have been a terrible day and go out assuming that today will be mine . I wish I knew what it was about getting rest that makes me forget . Someone destroyed all the evidence for the past five years of my life . I 'm not sure how it happened . I woke up today and all the receipts , all the things I 'd done , all the transactions I 'd made , were gone . Scrubbed from anywhere that kept track . My apartment has been cleaned out of any identifying characteristics . To all appearances I 've just moved in here . Like none of it happened . All I have to show for the last five years is me . Five years , in which so many things happened and so much changed that I don 't even remember it all . I needed some of that evidence just so I could keep track . It 's gone . None of the relationships or the lies or the mistakes or the good times - - they happened , I think , if I can trust my memory . But I can 't prove it . I can 't convince anyone if they doubt me . I 'm just me , and that 's all I have . No past , no story , nothing holding me back . This means I can do anything now . I finally have nothing to prove . I came home to a note which read something like this : " Came by , you weren 't here . Picked up some stuff . - S " Which she said she was going to do . I told her I probably wouldn 't be home , which was also true . Everything was exactly the way we 'd said it would be . But the note bothered me , even if I was expecting it . I 'd hoped that - - I picked up the phone . I hesitated . She didn 't want to hear from me . She just needed to pick up some things . She did . It wouldn 't help anything . I called . She answered on the first ring . " Hey , sorry I missed you . " " What did you take ? " " What ? " " What did you take ? " There was a moment of hesitation - - or maybe it was just thought . Then : " Mostly just stuff I left in the basement . You won 't miss anything , I promise . Some photo albums , some clothes . Things like that . " " Oh . " " How are you ? " " Not too bad . Busy . " " Oh . " " Yeah . Anyway , just thought I 'd call and see if , you know . " Silence . Then , " Yeah . It was good talking to you , Rob . " She hung up by the time I said " you , too . " I went downstairs to reshuffle some boxes , now that hers were gone . I didn 't ask if any of the photos she 'd taken away were of me . Dear A ___ , When last you saw me it was at my going away party . I wanted to say that I had a very nice time , and that I feel very bad for not being entirely straight with you . I said that I should be returning at the end of the summer . I lied . I may be gone for some time . I meant to tell you that night , but I couldn 't . Going away parties are meant to be happy . If there are tears , they are tears to celebrate all of the excellent times we 've had . They should not be maudlin , and seeing your tears convinced me that I should become very maudlin indeed if I had to tell you . So I am writing you this letter now , removed from your smile and your tears and your questions . I want you to know that I appreciated every moment , and I wished there had been more of them . But such is the way of things . The best of times are rare and impossible to appreciate until they are gone , and in my case were the only thing that made an otherwise intolerable environment bearable . And I know you would never permit me to be so dramatic in person , and that is precisely what it is about you that made me enjoy every moment so much , and precisely what it is I will miss so dramatically . I wish very much that we had been more than what we were , but apart from everything else being so perfect , the time was too short for that . But perhaps we 'll meet again , some other time in this fleeting life . Think of me when it snows , will you ? Yours , R __ M ____ I woke up this morning to a world filled with colors I had never seen before . Everything seemed so much more alive and vibrant - - like I 'd been living in greyscale until this very moment . I 'm not sure if I 'm saying that right . Is it - - sharpness ? I was so excited to see everything , I walked through my day in a daze . How can I focus on work when the sky is so blue ? And nothing seemed familiar . It was all so new . Like I 'd never seen any of it before and it was there just for me . I couldn 't talk to anyone about it , though . This was my little secret , and if they noticed I was being spacey , none of them asked me about it except to say " Are you okay ? " and I just nodded . That 's what you do . And they left me alone and I wondered : Was it possible none of them noticed how beautiful everything is ? Had I changed or had the world ? Was this real ? Ay , there 's the rub . This could be entirely in my head . I could have gone mad . I could be completely divorced from reality . Or , what seemed even worse , perceiving it wrong . Maybe the dreary shades of grey I was so used to were the way it really was . I started doubting everything and hid from the sun , wearing dark glasses and shading my eyes when I had to go out , even at night , keeping my room as bare and white as possible , until there was nothing beautiful left . In the convenience store last night I walked into another world . I was in the back corner considering if I wanted to buy a pack of Jones soda when it happened . Everything was different somehow , though I couldn 't tell what had changed . I figured it was just sleep deprivation catching up to me and went home . I put my soda in the refrigerator and laid down on the couch to take a nap . My girlfriend came over later and we chatted for a while . I asked if she 'd gotten a haircut or done something different with her hair or something and she said no , nothing had changed . I shrugged and went into the kitchen to get us a soda , and we sat down and drank . It did not taste like any soda I 'd ever tasted . I said , " Does this taste funny to you ? " and she took a sip and said , " No , it 's just fine . " And then I gave her mine . " Tastes just the same . " I tried hers . It was different , too . I sighed . " Maybe I 'm just getting sick or something . " " Sorry , hon . " I told her I was really tired , and she 'd had a long day , so we took a nap . It felt strange having her there - - she didn 't feel familiar like she used to . Her kiss felt uncertain . I slept uneasily , and I slept for a long time . When I woke up I was groggy and confused , and had no idea where I was . I barely recognized my girlfriend , and it was only the memory that that 's who it was that reminded me - - I 'm in my house . This is my bed . That 's my lamp . So why don 't I recognize any of it ? I confronted her about it one evening , when I 'd had a bit too much to drink . She said she had a lot more in storage , but she knew I wasn 't buying it . I told her I hated how much time she spent on whatever she was doing , and asked her to stop . " I can 't . I need this . For me . " " This is all you ever do now . " " Just - - an hour or two every day , at least . Let me keep that . Please ? " I agreed but I still wasn 't happy about it . And every night she 'd come home and spend an hour in the room , and eventually I couldn 't take it anymore . I told her I was going to be out of town for the weekend , packed up , and waited for her to leave for work . Then I walked into the room . It was a mess , filled with boxes and statuettes scattered everywhere . But it wasn 't clear what she 'd been doing , so I hid and waited instead . Several hours later she came home , singing to herself . She walked around outside for a while and I wondered if she wasn 't coming in at all , but then she walked in with a glass of wine and sat down at the desk . I expected her to pull out her laptop and begin to work ; instead she produced some sort of clay and began sculpting . It was strange watching her work . She seemed focused and intent and quiet - - and peaceful . She somehow seemed so much more vulnerable - - so much more alive , in a way that she never really seemed to be the rest of the time , when she was just putting on a show for my benefit . She probably would have kept going for hours without ever noticing me , but I tried shifting quietly when my leg fell asleep and ended up knocking over a few statuettes . She wheeled on me then , looking frightened at first , then angry - - in a way which seemed both new and very reminiscent of the day we met . I stood quickly , saying something like " I can explain , " but she stopped me . " No , you can 't , " she said . " I 'm sorry ? " " You 're not . Get the fuck out . " " What - - " " I 'm leaving . " She began throwing things in her bag , avoiding my gaze as she did . Once she 'd finished , I still stood there dumbfounded . She walked up next to me and stared for what seemed like hoursPosted by The money wasn 't fast coming in but it was steady . But it was small and I started dropping hints that I wanted more - - never suggesting she should do more , but by a week or so she was spending more and more time in her closed room . Things were tense around the house at times , but for the most part she seemed happy . But there was a weird distance there , like there was something she wasn 't letting me see . It made her calmer than usual and happier , but I wasn 't allowed in and it made me crazy . I think she could tell I was upset because she started spending more and more time locked in the room . Some days she 'd go in at odd hours , after I was asleep , and come back to bed hours later smelling of cigarettes and cheap beer and sleep contentedly next to me . Some days she 'd just sleep in there and I wouldn 't see her at all . And whenever I 'd ask she just repeated her demand that I stay out . Always quiet , polite , kissing me on the cheek . " For us , remember ? " And I was starting to wonder if it was . She seemed completely changed , and seemed to dread time outside of her little space . But I couldn 't argue , because she was pulling in a lot more money than I 'd even hoped for . The emergency fund was more than full . She didn 't seem to care . It had become her thing , now . By now she should have gone through all of the little statuettes , I was sure . Every day she left with more and more packages to post . And yet the same ones still decorated various surfaces of the house . The supply never seemed to diminish . I 've never fallen for anyone quite so quickly as I did Clara . For the next several months it felt like we were never separated . And then her lease expired and I didn 't even think twice about asking her to move in with me . It just felt right , and the economy was still pretty bad . It made sense . She moved in while I was out of town . I came home and it felt more like home than it ever had . I 'm really not sure how you 're supposed to describe it . It 's not like everything was perfect , but it felt like one of those one - in - a - million things . We were seizing the moment because it was something you couldn 't pass up . But times were tough and the money got tight , and my savings were starting to look a little thin , and neither of us were pulling in enough to add any more to it - - we could get by , but an emergency would bankrupt us both . I was out of ideas . She suggested she could sell some of the little statuettes and trinkets she had . She had a lot of them - - boxes and boxes of them , and a lot of them she used to decorate the house . " They 're from my grandma . She 'd travel a lot and she always came home with something for me . " " You don 't have to do that . " " They 're just trinkets . What am I going to do with a little statuette ? I don 't need a paperweight . " " I guess . " There was a spare room that was ostensibly a study that I mostly used for storage , and she set up camp in there . She 'd spend a few hours doing inventory and listing them for sale online after she came home every day . " Don 't ever interrupt me though , " she said . She insisted on it several times . " If you interrupt I 'll get distracted and I 'll never get anything done . This is for both of us . " And if I knew one thing about her , it was that it 's never good to argue when she was this insistent . And I never went into the room anyway , so it wasn 't much work to agree . " You have to promise , " she said . " I promise . " " Then I 'll get you your savings back . " She poured us each a whiskey and sat down on the couch , cupping hers in both hands . " I really did want to say thanks for helping me out , " she said . " Don 't worry about it . " " It - - I mean I was pretty fucked up , but it meant a lot to know there 's still nice people in the world . " " I 'm sure your friends would have helped you out eventually . " " I could have got a cab . I was going to call one . But no , you 're just a perfect stranger helping someone out . I mean , you could have been - - I really owe you . " " Can I ask what was wrong ? I mean , apart from - - " " Everything . " She laughed and leaned up against me . " It 's a fucked up world . I couldn 't begin to tell you . " " Well , I 'm really glad we ran into each other . " She kissed me then , and said , " Me , too . When are we doing this again ? " " As soon as possible , I think . " I tried to explain defensively how I knew her friends , and she just smiled at me . " Relax , kid . You did a nice thing . I wanted to say thanks . My name 's Clara . " She held out a hand and I shook it . " Good to meet you . " " Yeah . So I 'm going to buy you a beer or two tonight . To say thanks . " " Tonight ? I 'm kind of - - " " Offer 's got an expiration date of today , kid . Take it or leave it . " A deadline is pretty handy at changing one 's perspective . " Sure , why not ? " And we actually got on really well . It felt natural . After an evening of barhopping and exaggerated stories , the bars closed and we went back to her place for a nightcap . My head was spinning by now but it was far too early to end the evening . Her apartment was easy enough to find , and there was an elevator right to her floor . I laid her down on the couch and turned the light on . " Is it all right if I look at your hand ? " " If you want . " There was broken glass in the palm of her hand . I did my best to remove it , then wrapped up her hand with a cloth she insisted it was okay for me to use . She didn 't seem to notice . I helped her to bed , and she fell asleep almost immediately . Her apartment - - such as it was - - was filled with little sculptures , including several glass sculptures . I didn 't think to ask about her , though sometimes I wondered if she was okay . I stopped seeing the girl , and mostly lost touch with that circle . Then one day Clara was on my doorstep , sober and smiling wryly . I said , " Um , hi . " " Hey there , " she said . " Who the fuck are you ? " You may have heard this story before , but it 's new . The first time I met Clara , she was falling - down drunk and her friends were mostly just laughing at her . It was at a party where I didn 't really know the host but the girl I was seeing at the time told me to come . It was a pretty cliquish party . None of my conversation seemed to get anywhere . I was really just waiting for an excuse to go , but I hadn 't even seen the girl - - I honestly forget her name now . I felt like I had to at least say hello . And then Clara shouted " fuck you , " punched someone in the eye , and staggered out the door . From her friends the reaction was mostly amused . Someone asked " Shouldn 't we go after her ? " The consensus was that she wouldn 't get far , and she probably just needed space . " Probably just going for a cigarette , " someone said . I decided that " a cigarette " was a good excuse to duck outside , but it 's not like anyone was following me . She was seated on the sidewalk not too far from the house , clutching her knees to her chest and crying quietly . It looked like she 'd fallen and skinned her knees , and there was some blood coming from her left hand as well . I sat down next to her . " You all right ? " " I just wanna go home . " " Is it far ? " She shook her head . " I keep falling down . " I glanced back at the house . " Can I walk you there ? " She shrugged , then nodded . I helped her to her feet and she leaned on me heavily as we walked back to her apartment . She took me to the Oregon beach and we burned driftwood and drank cheap wine out of the bottle and watched the darkness creeping in . She fell asleep on my shoulder when the bottle was empty , and I threw it out into the beach and watched the fire burning low . She woke up when I wrapped the blanket around her shoulders . I told her I 'm glad she took me here , and she nodded . " It 's my favorite place in the world , " she said , and she probably meant it . I said something about how I wished this night would last forever , and she didn 't say anything . But there was something sad in her eyes . We spent a week there together . When it was warm we 'd sleep on the beach with the blankets and the fire and each other for warmth . When it was too cold we 'd walk back to the house we were staying in once the fire burned out , sleeping in our little bed , happy just to be there . At the end of the week she asked me if I 'd always think back on this as a happy memory , and I said I would . " Do you promise ? " " Absolutely . " We slept peacefully that night . She was gone in the morning , and I was alone and cold in the sunrise , trying to find her footprints in the sand . All I found was driftwood leading away from the rocks forever . When we got married , we had little cyanide capsules surgically installed , so that we could only activate each other 's . It was perfectly foolproof , and it was intended as a gesture of trust . I always felt like saying things like " I trust you with my life " was cheap , and now we had a way to back it up . I didn 't really think about it at the time . It felt like the right thing to do . I always felt like if I had someone else 's life in my hands there would be a power trip . Like I wouldn 't be able to be trusted with it . Maybe it was because it was mutual that I never felt that way , or maybe it 's because we really did trust each other , but it just felt so natural and perfect - - like wearing new shoes . At first you 're kind of aware of it and it 's uncomfortable but then they get broken in and you forget you have them entirely . I was on a business trip to California where it 's warm and nice this time of year , and after the conference I stopped at the bar for a drink with a woman who reminded me of a girl I never quite got over . A drink or two , anyway . I don 't remember a point where I could have not gone back to her hotel room . There 's never a moment like that . Later , still drunk , I confessed it all on the phone and my wife forgave me like the beautiful person she is . I knew it could have been my life , and I know she was just tired . Maybe she wasn 't thinking . Maybe she 'd want revenge . Better safe than sorry , right ? Safety was just the press of a button away . I tossed the ring out the window and texted the other woman saying I 'd ordered champagne if she was interested . This weekend would be ours . I hadn 't met my girlfriend yet in any of my high school yearbook photos . I 've been studying them intently for the past few days . I still have the same smiles : the same smirk for when I know there 's a camera , the same crooked smile when I don 't . I 've aged since then , obviously , and lost weight , but the smile is the same . You can tell a lot about someone from their smile . I 'm between two girls with perfectly composed smiles in all my yearbook photos . Every year their smile is the same . In every photograph , even when they can 't see the camera . The same smile . It 's plastic . It 's a smile that 's meant for photographs . It 's guarded . These are people who go far because they know how to give people what they want , instead of give them who they are . In mine I just look frightened . I 'm not sure of what - - maybe that I won 't be smiling anymore soon . Or maybe I 'm just surprised to be smiling ? Either way , it 's the same everywhere . No changes after I met my girlfriend , or when we started dating . I 'm still afraid of smiling , I 'm still smirking at the camera , fooling only myself . But she 's changed me . I know she has . I 'm happier now . Surely that has to come through in photographs ? So I keep looking for little signs . There 's nothing new in my eyes . There 's nothing different . It 's all the same . A massive yawning chasm opened up in town square last week . No one seems to know where it came from or why it 's there , and there doesn 't seem to be a bottom . It just goes on forever . It 's perfectly round , and the police have roped it off with police tape , but nobody stops you from going up and looking down . Scientists keep saying it 's impossible , and I guess they know more about that than I do . My sister was in town today , so I took her down to the abyss and we sat at the edge and had a picnic . We just threw the garbage into the gaping emptiness . We didn 't talk about the fact that our feet were dangling into an impossibility . That would be awkward . Every night since it opened I 've gone out and paced around its circumference . I never measure it or counted steps , but it takes about an hour to go all the way around and I can do it with my eyes closed now . It 's so dark and quiet and smooth . Sometimes I 'll shout into it and the echoes seem to last forever . And then they fall quiet and I 'm all alone again . It feels more familiar than anything I 've ever known . I know its shape , its infinite depth . Everything about my hometown , my lover , seems like I barely scratched the surface before . Now I understand them in relation to the abyss , and it seems so much clearer . I have lost the ability to communicate with my girlfriend in any way . It started last week . I noticed that any time she talked , it sounded like English , but I didn 't understand any of the words . I couldn 't grasp anything she wrote . And I could tell from her expression that she didn 't know what I was saying either , though we couldn 't even communicate non - verbally . Somehow it just doesn 't make any sense . It has not affected either of our abilities to communicate with other people , though it does prevent them from actually being able to successfully act as an intermediary between us . Or that 's what I think I 've managed to figure out . It 's hard . We can 't actually spend time in the same room with other people anymore , unless one of us doesn 't say anything , and even then we only get half the conversation . I wish I knew what it was doing to her . She seems so sad lately . She 'll come home and cry and I 'll hold her and try to tell her it will be okay , knowing that she won 't understand . She says something to me and I wish I knew what it was . I just know that her kisses taste like farewells and sad endings , and if she leaves I 'll never know until she 's gone . And I 'll always wonder if one day she 'll return . My dreams have been increasingly vivid lately , and more believable . I don 't want to say realistic , but I never think about them being dreams . Everything makes perfect sense and I 've started building these elaborate worlds in my mind , which aren 't usually that different from the real world . The characters are the same . The differences are subtle , and grow more profound as time wears . I wake up confused , anxious , worried , or , rarely , happy . Except , lately the worlds are getting stranger . There 's more differences . The world won 't be round at all . There will be no more electricity . Time doesn 't work properly . Everything takes place in the framework of a novel or a play , and there 's no time between scenes . I 've always had these dreams but I 've never believed them before . Usually I figure it out . But these days I don 't . I go through these absurd worlds like they 're real - - it 's not like I understand them any less than the real world , and they have the benefit of dream logic to them . And then I wake up in the morning , and somehow nothing seems real anymore . I wander through my life in a daze . My girlfriend asks me what 's wrong , and I usually don 't hear her . The one time that I do , I tell her I feel like something has changed . " Between us ? " she says , and I say no . I tell her I can 't explain it . I tell her that it feels like I found a loose thread in reality and just started pulling , and soon everything started coming unravelled . " It 's more like I 'm in a story than a word with rules . " And she holds me close like she does when she 's worried about me , and I fall asleep , and a world which makes sense waits for me . The strangest part about the end of the world was how familiar it all felt . It happens sometimes with disasters : I 'll hear the report on the radio and then I will wonder why they are reporting old news . Yes , I understand that the world is on fire . But didn 't we already know that ? This time it 's worse , though . I walked outside to see smoke rising from Boston 's skyline , to see most of the Prudential tower just gone , and it felt like I 'd done that before . The smoke was in the same shapes . The train that was derailed just across the street was derailed at the same place it was before . And of course it hadn 't been . I called my lover to make sure everything was okay , and immediately it was like we 'd had this conversation before . I hung up the phone , not worried that the world was over , but that I was living out something that I 'd already seen happen . This morning you woke up and you realized you 've changed , that the person that used to smile back at you in the mirror is different . The world 's been getting a little bit bigger every day , fractionally , bit by bit . Not enough to notice , never enough to notice . None of this is new , exactly . You 've had moments all through your life where you 're afraid of the person you 've become . What is new is this : you 're happy with this person you 've become . The smile in the mirror is sincere , for the first time in your life . There 's a beautiful world of dreams and lies out there , and finally , finally , you 're someone who knows how to navigate that world . |
That day is a blur ; it was supposed to be my day of rest , after going out to Union to search for Dad on Saturday , Sunday , Monday . I had set Wednesday as my return to work , if we didn 't find him . I had very mixed feelings about going back to work . I couldn 't stay out indefinitely ; what if we never find him ? Sometimes , people who go missing are never , ever found . They just disappear without a trace . How does a person just disappear ? The laws of physics tell us that matter cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system ; therefore , he can 't just be gone . He is somewhere in the Escheresque universe in which I 've been living since 8 : 40 Friday morning ; I just can 't find my way to him . The angles are all wrong , they are impossible , incomprehensible . I 've been saying : " My dad is missing " . I could just as easily say : " I 'm missing my Dad " and mean it in all its double - entendred glory ; he 's missing ; I miss him ; oops , have I missed him ? What am I missing ? When someone goes missing , what happens to the people who are missing them ? What do they do ? Do they return to their jobs ? Do they shop for groceries on the way home from work ? Do they still buy Metrocards , and make sure that there 's milk in the refrigerator for breakfast the next morning ? Do they plan their meals for the coming week ? What about the laundry ? Do they carry on , do they do all of these things , all the while waiting for a call from the police or the FBI or a hospital or a morgue that their loved one or their loved one 's body has been found ? Or do they simply sit still ? Do they wait by the telephone , or stake out a spot in front of the computer , searching , researching , unable to move ? Do they take their cellphones into the shower ? Do they take showers ? Whatever I am doing , I feel like I should be doing something else instead . What if I 'm doing the wrong things , and that 's why I can 't find the right angle ? Is my approach all wrong ? I 've never known anyone else who had this happen . I have no experts to consult . I need a roadmap for this terra incognita where we are marooned . My plan for Tuesday was to talk to the detectives in the morning and get them to set the bloodhounds looking for my father . We were in Day 5 ; Dad had been missing for ninety - six hours ( I had decided that , when we got to one hundred hours , I would switch to counting days ) . Frank and I awoke to the alarm , took our showers , ate our breakfast , drank our coffee , shared the New York Times , watched Weather Channel , just like we do every day . It was all so nice and normal . I turned on my computer to check email . I had messages from my friend Janice asking if there 'd been any word ( no ) ; from my friend Peg , who pointed out how easily the elderly become invisible to the rest of us , allowing as how if Dad had gone out in his pajamas , someone might remember having seen him ( he had done that already , the week before ) ; from Nancy , letting us know that she , Chris and Grant would be in New Jersey by around 2 that afternoon . She added that Chris suggested that one way to get Dad back would be to buy and install an air conditioner in his dining room ( Dad was legendarily spartan about heating and cooling ) . The search had become its own creature , apart from Dad ; Dad and the search for Dad were two separate beings . There had been moments when I felt we were searching just for the sake of doing something . It wasn 't that I thought our efforts were useless or hopeless ; there was a small ( and shrinking ) part of me that thought we might yet find him , and find him alive . Surely there was a reasonable explanation for him being missing ; the Laws of the Conservation of Matter decreed that he was still somewhere in the known universe . Since Friday , I had been dealing with the unknowingness of my situation by trying to control those things I could . To be effective , to move forward , I had to be dispassionate about the alternatives that lay before us . I had to be on task , I had to manage time well , I had to ruthlessly prioritize . It was like managing the store ( people / product / operations ) , except this really was life and death . I wasn 't alone ; I had lots of help , all the help I could ask for ; my husband , my siblings and sibs - in - law , their children , our friends were living through this with me ; but I felt so terribly alone . Okay , so the detectives would have dogs and helicopters … Det . Moutis said that we should register for a Silver Alert . I said I 'd set it up if he sent me a link . Monday night , when I got home from New Jersey , before we had dinner , Frank and I were talking about places that George and Barbara and Alyssa and Kevin and Glenn and the neighbors and I couldn 't get into to search on our own . Frank had made a list of the kinds of places that should be searched ; abandoned buildings within a reasonable radius ; houses that had been foreclosed upon , and were vacant ; garages , sheds , outbuildings , even on occupied properties - we 'd had a cat years ago who had gotten locked in a neighbor 's garage by accident , and he 'd been missing for three days before the neighbor returned , opened the garage , and out came our Patch . Maybe Dad crawled into or under an abandoned car in a foreclosed garage and has been unable to get out and come home . Maybe he fell through a rotted floor in a vacant , derelict house . Maybe he got lost again , and went into a house that he thought was his , except it was empty , and now he thought we had sold all of his things or that he had lost the house to taxes . When we had his income taxes done earlier that spring , he got confused , and thought the new accountant was there to take his house away . Maybe he was looking for Mom . My email to Det . Moutis crossed with his email to me giving me the web address for setting up a Silver Alert . I should have guessed it - www . silveralert . org - and I can 't remember now why I couldn 't . I registered my dad for the Silver Alert and uploaded the picture that we 'd used on his flyers . I emailed the link to Det . Moutis and all my sibs with the login and password . For some reason - and I don 't know if it still works this way - the login and password were only good for an hour , and I had to re - log - in and re - upload his picture once the hour was up . I called my contact at Union 's Channel 12 to give her Dad 's information and the Facebook page URLs so she could do a screengrab of the flyer . I promised to follow up with a flyer by email , in case the screengrab wasn 't sufficiently clear . Lexi promised to get the information on the air that day . Janet and Wally were at Dad 's , getting ready to leave for Maryland , since Nancy was coming up . Someone had to be in Maryland to take care of the total of five cats and one dog between the two households , so Janet and Nancy tag - teamed . I think that George and Barbara were both back at work - it 's so hard to remember now , and my cell phone and text records aren 't clear . Alyssa had finals coming up , so she was back in school . John was planning to arrive on Thursday . Maybe we 'd find Dad by then . The detectives had arrived , with the bloodhound and his handler from the Essex County Canine Unit . It was mid - day . They 'd had to wait for the bloodhound to come from the next county , because Union County didn 't have one of their own . The handler , wearing latex gloves , took my father 's old worn pajamas outside , and spread the top and bottom out on the lawn in front of Dad 's house . ( The image I conjured for myself of my father 's nightclothes spread out on the lush grass is indelibly imprinted on my mind 's eye . ) The handler wears gloves so that he doesn 't transfer his own scent particles to the scent article . I am in my living room . I am waiting , too . I text Glenn ( not wanting to tie up the phone ) ; he has heard nothing , and is getting anxious . They have not been gone long . The bloodhound veered left at the head of the path , into the woods , without hesitation . They went deep , deeper , following my father 's scent , over brambles , and weeds , and thickets of vines , into the heavy brush . They found him lying on the ground . He said it would have been impossible to find him without the bloodhound . The brush and tangles of vines and weeds were more than two feet high ; Dad had sat down on a log , taken off his shoes , and either lay down or fell back . He was on the ground , his glasses and tan hat were off to the side , his watch still on his wrist . He was clothed except for his shoes , which were on the ground next to the log . They would have to confirm his identity with dental records . He had been out in the elements for more than one hundred hours . The coroner would later say that he had almost certainly died the first day . That would account for the lack of sightings , I thought to myself . Nancy , Chris , and Grant arrived at Dad 's house at about the time that the detectives were calling me . I must have called Janet and Walter , John and Cheryl , Barbara and George , but I don 't remember doing so . Frank came home sometime in the late afternoon and I told him . I am sure I was crying , but I don 't remember . I texted my friends . I called the store and told Emery that they had probably found my father , and I wouldn 't be coming in on Wednesday after all . Janet and Wally are due in from Maryland at about noon . I have to make some calls before I leave . I 'll be on the 9 : 47AM LIRR to Penn , and pick up the 10 : 37 NJT train to Roselle Park . That will get me to Jersey at about twenty past eleven . I 'll have the chance to get a couple of things done here before I leave , and to get a couple of things done at Dad 's before Janet and Wally arrive . I call the UCPD . The dispatcher recognizes my voice . I ask to speak to the desk sergeant . I verify that the new platoon has my dad 's photo . I tell them we are continuing our search today , and that I need to speak to the detectives when they come in . I can 't listen . I love her , and would have spared her this news if I didn 't feel I had to prepare her for a bad outcome . But , I have my own burden of fear to carry , and it is heavy enough . I detach myself carefully , tell her I have to leave for New Jersey to continue the search , and promise to keep her informed . George and Glenn are waiting for me at Roselle Park . As we edge out of the parking lot , I look at each of them and ask if they mind if I speak very freely . They both nod for me to go ahead . " I think that if we find Dad , we won 't find him alive . We may not ever find him at all . He 's been gone too long . " Glenn says that he didn 't want to be the first one to say that , but he agrees . So does George . They are both relieved that I have said this out loud . I ask George if he thinks Barbara and Alyssa are preparing themselves . He isn 't sure . I tell him about my conversation with Barb in the A & P parking lot on Sunday , when I asked about Alyssa . We get to Dad 's and open up the windows to air it out . The weather 's been beautiful since Dad disappeared ; there was only a brief shower on Saturday , late afternoon ; otherwise , it 's been sunny and not too hot . Glenn 's been taking care of the mail over the weekend , not letting it pile up on the porch . The neighbors all know about Dad , and have walked the woods and the neighborhood themselves . Ron , the neighbor across the street , tells us about a shelter in Elizabeth ; maybe Dad is there . George 's neighbor Joanne had mentioned one too . Both places were on the list that Nancy and Janet have been calling all weekend . None of the neighbors , or the shopkeepers , or the cemetery workers saw him Friday morning . It 's like Dad walked out of his door and into thin air . I have been playing phone tag with the detectives through the day . Finally , I get to speak to them briefly . They give me their direct dial numbers and email addresses . I talk to them about where we looked for Dad over the weekend . Detective George Moutis told me that everywhere he and his partner , Detective Ken Elliot , canvassed , we had already covered . He and his crew had seen scores of our flyers all over Union . And they had fewer leads than we did - they had no sightings at all . They hadn 't come across even one person who had seen Dad on Friday , or since . Janet and Walter are going back to Maryland in the morning ; Nancy , Chris and Grant will be up in the early afternoon . Barbara is at work , and Alyssa is at school . John is flying in on Thursday . I am going home to rest for a day , and go back to work on Wednesday , unless of course Dad is found . When I get home , I tell Frank about what the day has held . We eat our dinner , watch a movie or some South Park episodes ( I don 't remember , and I think I fell asleep ) . Before bed , I email the detectives ' contact information to all the sibs and spouses . I am up by 6AM . Dad has been missing for forty - six hours . I take my shower , check my email and begin with my plan for the day . I spend the early morning tracking down local media outlets - broadcast and cable television , radio , newspapers - and emailing them flyers . By 9AM I have contacted local channels 2 , 4 , 5 , 7 , 9 , 11 and NJ 12 ( who said they needed a press release from the police - that will be my first thing Monday morning , if we haven 't found him by then ) . I contact the NY Post and the NY Daily News . I don 't bother with the Times because this is happening in Jersey and they won 't care . If he is still missing tomorrow , I will also hit the local New Jersey newspapers - I can look them up and get their contact information when I get back tonight . A bit past 9AM , I talk to the dispatch officer at the police station at the beginning of the day shift . The new platoon is out with pictures of Dad in their cars . My mom 's best friend Thea has made the same arrangements at the 110th Precinct in Corona , just in case Dad ( somehow ) did make there . It is looking less and less like a realistic scenario , but we all feel the need to cover all the bases . If I thought he could come up with the idea of flying somewhere , I 'd have posted at the airports too . I just want to find him . All the sibs have the flyer in their email inboxes , and all the sibs are forwarding it to their address books with instructions to pass it on . All of us on Facebook have forwarded the page I created last night . Alyssa made up her own page , using the same layout , and called it Help Me Find My Grandfather . She forwarded the link to all of her Facebook friends and they are in turn forwarding it to theirs . The page has over a hundred " likes " already , most of them Alyssa 's friends in Union . John and Cheryl are tweeting it on Twitter , Barbara is posting it on her fitness boards . Barb emailed me first thing this morning that she 'd had a dream that their cat Dallas was missing . She said she found her on the side of Dad 's house , alive , buried in some snow . Barbara says she is going to look by the side of Dad 's house this morning , again , just in case . At this point , we know that if Dad hasn 't been taken into an ER or shelter by someone , his mobility will be limited , he will be exhausted , hungry , dehydrated , off his meds for more than forty - eight hours . Our best hope for finding him is that he is resting somewhere - a park bench , bleachers , a shady spot under a tree . We covered that ground yesterday and will do it again today . We 're going to visit some of the same places , in case there are new people there who don 't know about Dad . Before I leave , I email Nancy and ask her to find email addresses for Our Lady of Sorrows and P . S . 19 in Corona , and send them the flyer with a note . I ask her to get email addresses for the hospitals and shelters on her call list , and send them the flyer . Everyone at these places is aware that we are looking for Dad ; it will help keep him in the front of their mind if they have a picture to refer to , and the knowledge that there is a family who desperately wants to find him . Barbara offers to fax the flyers from work to any place that doesn 't have an email address . The guy at reception today is the same guy who was there yesterday , and he still hasn 't seen Dad and there have been no John Does admitted . Our flyer is posted on the wall behind the desk , behind the thick Plexiglas window that separates him from me . I use the hospital rest room and go back out to the car . George takes me back to his house , where he and Glenn are working replacing a faucet , and Barb , Alyssa and I leave in Barb 's car . At 2 : 02 PM , my cell rings . It 's George . Patty from Café Z thinks she saw Dad near the Lowe 's on Morris Avenue in Union . It 's two miles from his house , but Dad has walked that far in good weather many times . George and Glenn each get into their cars and separately approach the location Patty described from opposite sides of Morris Avenue . They don 't want to miss him . Walter calls me at 2 : 08 and I tell him about the sighting . I am talking with both him and Janet when Glenn calls me . I switch to Glenn 's call . George is coming up in the other direction , sees Glenn 's car , sees the old man , sees it 's not Dad . They go to Café Z to tell Patty , and to thank her . It 's the only real glimmer of hope we 've had in fifty - four hours . They go back to the house , deflated . I take the 10 : 03AM from Murray Hill to Penn . I bring an extra $ 50 and the Capital One credit card statement so I can stop at the bank at the corner of 7th Avenue and 33rd Street in between trains . The NJT train won 't leave until 11 : 07AM anyway . That 'll give me almost half an hour to cross the street and pay the bill on its due date . It 'll also add the slightest semblance of normalcy to my increasingly surreal situation . When I get to Penn , I go to the NJT ticket machines and get two off - peak round trips ( I can always use them , is my very practical thought ) . I go up the escalator , turn left and walk to the Capital One on the next corner . It is empty at 10 : 35AM . There is one teller on , and no line . I pass the statement and my fifty - dollar bill under the bulletproof glass . She takes the statement and the money , inputs the account information , completes my transaction , and slides me my receipt . We go back to Dad 's , so I can walk around the house myself . I just want to see for myself how he left things . I know this is not logical , because since Dad left , Vee has been here , Glenn has been here , the policemen have been here , detectives have been here , George and Barbara and Alyssa have been here , and maybe some other people , too . We leave Dad 's , grab a quick bite at Galloping Hill , go back to George and Barbara 's house , and go over what 's been done so far . They walked the woods by the house yesterday , and again today . They walked the woods by Washington School again this morning . They 've been driving around the neighborhood . Barb thought she saw Dad when she was out driving and looking . It was about 7AM . She was driving up by Union Station , on Morris Avenue , when she saw an elderly man walking . She slowed down , and took a good look . She couldn 't really tell ; he had his hat pulled down , and he wasn 't facing her . The man 's clothing was similar … . could it be Dad ? She got out of the car , and went up to him , looked at his face , closely . I 'd brought my staple gun and packaging tape with me from home . We have to make a flyer for posting . I ask Barb if I can use her computer . I go downstairs to work . I remember that Alyssa has recent pictures of Dad on her Facebook page - she and Dad visited the cemetery right after one of the huge snowstorms this past winter , and I know that there are a couple of full - face ones . I right - click copy the one where he and Alyssa are looking right at the camera , paste it into an image editor , and crop Alyssa out . I close in on his face and center it . I type my text , fine - tune the spacing and size of the text so it can be easily read from a passing car , and print out about a hundred of them . The first place we visit is the cemetery . We post a flyer on the tree by Mom 's grave and ask her to watch over Dad , and to please help us . We know that if he can be helped , she will see to it . We go to the office and speak to the manager ; he knows my dad . He has seen Dad visit Mom 's grave every day in every kind of weather . He says all the groundskeepers know who Dad is , too . He asks the ones on duty if they saw him . No one can remember if he was there yesterday or not . He promises to keep an eye out . I give him some flyers , and ask his permission to post some more around the cemetery . He agrees . I look back at him over my shoulder on my way out , and I catch the unguarded sadness on his face . We visit every park , every local body of water ( dementia patients are attracted to bodies of water , I had read somewhere , sometime ) every doctor 's office , school and playground that Alyssa ever went to with Mom and Dad , posting flyers . We go to Town Hall ( post , outside and in ) , to the library ( post on the bulletin board and on trees in the parking lot ) , up to Café Z to tell Patty , the owner , and leave her some flyers and our cell phone numbers . She knows Dad well - we 've had our family Thanksgiving dinners there since the year Mom died . We drive up and down endless streets , posting . We leave flyers with whomever we speak with in Union . We post more . In Westfield . In Kenilworth . In Cranford . In Garwood . The first time Dad went for a walk where the cops brought him home , they found him up by Saint Demetrios , almost three miles from his house , a few blocks away from the precinct house . That was almost three months ago , in late March . Two patrolmen just starting their midday shift saw an elderly man who seemed confused and went up to him and asked him if he was okay . He couldn 't figure out where he was , but he knew who he was and where he lived , so they took him home and called Barb at work . At about 2PM , George left a voice mail on my cell to let me know what had happened , and that he had sent Glenn over to Dad 's to look in on him and make sure he was all right . I called Dad as soon as I picked up the voice mail , but only got the answering machine ( with my mother 's voice on the outgoing message ; we 'd never changed it ) . I called Barb , and we tried to figure it out ; we thought that Dad must have been on his way to the cemetery , which meant he was walking for about four hours , if he followed his habit of leaving the house at around 8AM . He had probably just continued on Chestnut Street instead of taking the left fork on to Galloping Hill , at the Five Points intersection where Galloping Hill Road and Chestnut cross the end of Salem Road . He was found all the way up on Rahway Avenue , past the entrance to the Garden State , past the turnoff on to Stuyvesant and Cioffi 's , almost as far from the house as Alyssa 's high school and Café Z . We drive and walk and post flyers for a few more hours , all over Union . By Dad 's house . Around the corners , both ways . On Salem Road . On Chestnut Street , by his bank and the vegetable store where he buys his bananas and the Dunkin Donuts . By Eisenstat 's office on Galloping Hill Road . I am finally exhausted , and George drives me to the station so I can go home . We post flyers all along Chestnut Street as we go . Tomorrow , we will do this again . Tagscaregiving , Come to Me , Duty , elderly parents , faith , family , father , friends , grief , home , hope , joy , loss , love , Matthew 11 : 28 , mercy , missing , Missing Dad , missing persons , parents , patience , prayer , responsibility , search , search dogs , siblings , strength , trust The police meet Vee and Glenn at Dad 's house . They call me for details about Dad and where he would be likely to go . They want to know where he shops , where he banks , if he has friends he liked to see , who his doctor and dentist are , which area schools are the ones Alyssa has attended ( since he had shown up at her elementary school in his pajamas just eight days before ) , what church he attends , and anything else that might help . I have to leave soon , to go to work ; I am the manager - in - training at the Papyrus flagship store on Broadway and 76th Street in Manhattan . I am scheduled for noon until closing , which means I need to be on the 10 : 33 train . I would call out if we weren 't so short - staffed . As it is , our full - time keyholder , Mary , will be alone until I get there . Emery has a travel day and is going to be at both of his other stores giving performance reviews . Jacque isn 't scheduled until four , and since her review is supposed to be at the Columbus Avenue store , she probably isn 't even going to get to Broadway until almost five . If I call out , Mary will be alone either until Jacque comes in , or until Emery can get there . That just won 't work - that store is just too busy , and cannot run with only one person on the floor for six hours - is there anybody else who can cover me on short notice ? No . ( So , what would happen if I got hit by a truck on the way there ? Would they find someone then ? ) I 've managed the floor by myself for hours , or worked a thirteen - hour open - to - close shift when staff calls out or just doesn 't show up ; that 's precisely why I don 't do that to other people . Not even today , with this good a reason . I call Mary on my way to the train to tell her my father is missing . She said , " Oh , did they find him ? " I said , NO , HE IS MISSING . No one knows where he is . I get to Penn before eleven . I have no news from anyone . I have enough time to try to find a charger for my phone . I hadn 't charged it the night before and I 've been on it almost the whole morning . I take the local to 79th Street , stop at the T - Mobile store to see if I can find what I need . No dice - the sales associate practically laughs at my three - year - old no - frills Samsung . I try the electronics store across the street . They don 't have one either , but I do replace my broken watchstrap with a new black leather one . I never bring my cellphone on to the sales floor , but I make an exception this day . I am fielding texts from my sisters asking if there is any news , while I am emailing back and forth with my district manager and Corporate about a man who had attempted to make a fraudulent return in our store . In between , I am ringing up Father 's Day cards for customers . Frank checks in with me a couple of times , to see if I 've heard anything , to hear how I sound . He knows me better than anyone else on God 's green earth . He can pick things up in my voice that even I don 't know are there . Such are the blessings of a long - term happy marriage . " I haven 't heard anything from anyone . I 'm going to Port Authority after work , in case Dad got on a bus . " ( I 'm scared and I don 't know what else to do . ) " No news . Yes , thank you for offering , please come and close the store with Jacque . I don 't know where my father is , and I don 't know what is happening . " I grab a cab on Broadway , and I call home from my cell as the cab makes its way downtown . I am going to Port Authority on the small chance that somehow , my dad tried to come to see me in New York . Maybe he waited at our old bus stop , got on the 113S bus , got out at Port Authority and … . what ? Did I really think he could find his way to the 7 train , go to Corona , or to Flushing ? No , I didn 't . But in case he did , I need to tell the cops to be on the lookout . I hear the worry in my husband 's voice . I have to do this anyway . My mind 's ear hears him saying , " Come home now " when what he is really saying out loud is good luck , be careful . The cabdriver has overheard my conversation , and asks me if I am okay . I tell him my dad disappeared that morning and has been missing all day . I tell him why I am going to Port Authority . He asks me my father 's name so he can keep him in his prayers . We take the turn east on to 42nd Street , past Holy Cross Church , and at the southwest corner of 8th Avenue , he lets me out . I find the police station in the terminal . I speak to the desk sergeant , who asks me to take a seat and wait for the officer who will help me . She is very understanding and kind - she has heard this story before ( but it was never my story before ) . I give her a description of my father . I pull out the wallet - sized studio photo of my whole family that my brother had set up for Dad 's 80th birthday . She photocopies it . When she comes back , I tell her that the day we took the photo was the first time in twelve years that we had all been under the same roof . The only other picture I have of Dad in my wallet is the one from December 1972 , with him and Frank and me all dressed up for a gala dinner dance celebrating Our Lady of Sorrows ' 100th anniversary . In that picture , Dad is five years younger than I am now . I call my mom 's best friend , Thea , as I am leaving the police station - she works at the 110th Precinct in Corona , our old neighborhood . She still lives next door to the house I grew up in , on 42nd Avenue . She will put the word out at the 110 , just in case Dad somehow finds his way " home " to Corona . As soon as her husband hears the news about my dad , he takes a folding chair downstairs and sets it up in front of his building . He will wait there until about midnight , until he is exhausted and has to go upstairs to sleep . He is determined that , if my father comes walking down 42nd Avenue , he will intercept him and return him safely to Union , New Jersey . I won 't find this out for a while yet , but throughout the day , Frank has been trying to find ways to help me . Friday is one of his days at NYU 's School of Medicine , where he is the computer tech for a research group in the Psychiatry department . He has been asking the doctors who work there how he can best help me through whatever is coming . On his way home from work that Friday , he goes up to a police officer and tells him about my missing dad . The cop gives him an outline of what to expect and when , if Dad isn 't found on the first day . Frank is taking the long view ; he already knows that if Dad isn 't found before nightfall , the outcome is unlikely to be positive . When I get to Penn , I stop into the police station on the Long Island Railroad concourse , and tell them my story . They are very kind and , as the Port Authority police did , they take down my information . I get on the 7 : 49 Port Washington train to go home . I get in at about twenty past eight . Frank has dinner waiting for me , keeping warm on the stove . I eat , we talk . Unless we hear something tonight or early tomorrow , I will go to New Jersey in the morning to search for Dad . I will be with Barbara , George , and Alyssa . They , and Glenn , and Alyssa 's boyfriend Kevin have walked the woods by the house and near the Washington School several times already to see if they can find any sign at all of Dad . After dinner , I turn on my computer . All of us sibs and spouses discuss next steps by email . Nancy and her husband , Chris , are thinking of coming up , but I think it 's better if they stay in Maryland for the time being . Their eleven - year - old son , Grant , still has another week or so of school . Nancy and Janet ( who lives two doors down from her , with her husband Walter and their four cats ) can make calls from home - they will call hospitals , senior centers , homeless shelters , soup kitchens , urgent care centers , clinics , and any other place they can think of to see if there are any John Does matching Dad 's description . My 88 year old dad wandered off from his home and has been missing since 8AM Friday morning . He was gone when his morning caregiver arrived . Our extended family and friends and the Union County police are looking for him . I visited the station at Port Authority and talked to the PA police ( just in case he got on a bus , but I doubt it ) . I notified a friend of mine who works in our old home precinct in Corona ( just in case he tries to go back " home " ) . My father has been missing for more than sixteen hours . It 's dark out . He is almost always cold , even on hot summer days . I try not to think about this . I do not succeed . Sometime between dawn and eight AM on Friday the eleventh of June , Tony Karabaic left his home to take a walk . He locked the inside door and the porch door . He didn 't set the alarm because sometimes he would forget how to make it stop . He walked down Huntington , made a left at the corner of Livingston , and walked down past Forest Drive to the shortcut path through the woods to Salem Road . At 8 : 10 that same morning , his morning caregiver , Vee the RN , arrived . She rang the bell ; no answer . She took out her key and let herself in . She stood in the living room and called his name ; no answer . He was hard of hearing ; maybe he just didn 't hear her . His tan corduroy recliner - its worn fringed throw flung haphazardly over it - was empty . The piles of papers on the coffee table were in the same places they were in yesterday . Nothing seemed to be disturbed . There was no radio on - maybe he wasn 't at home ? She would have to look . She walked into the dining room . His pajamas were draped over the back of a dining chair . That was good - the last time he went out for an early morning walk , he was wearing his pajamas and slippers . Vee went into the kitchen . No dishes in the sink or on the table , but the bowl and glass were in the dish drainer . Had he eaten his breakfast ? Where was he ? She glanced over to the kitchen table , to see if his pills were in the gold glass ashtray on the table . There were a couple left in there - she looked to see which ones they were . Good - the afternoon and evening doses of Sinemet , his Parkinson 's med . The morning dose , the Xalatan , and the Felodipine were gone . She walked out of the kitchen to check the small bedroom , where his granddaughter Alyssa 's toys and drawings were . The high - riser bed was made up , with its hand - crocheted afghan neatly tucked beneath the foam bunker cushions , the little stuffed cats and bears neatly arranged atop them . He sometimes took a nap here later in the day , but this bed hadn 't been slept on lately . He was nowhere to be seen . Vee went back into the living room , and up the stairs . She turned left at the top of the stairs , to look in his bedroom . The room reminded her of a monk 's cell , with its spartan twin bed , simple chest , and holy pictures on the wall . The bedsheets and blankets were rumpled ; the room bore the warm , heavy scent of sleep . Okay , it looked like he had spent the night here - that was something . She went into the master bedroom , where his late wife , Georgia , used to sleep . There were papers and envelopes neatly arranged on the white chenille bedspread , but no Tony . She looked in the little office . She looked in the extra bedroom where his kids slept when they stayed for the weekend . She entered the bathroom , pulled the shower curtain aside , checked the bathtub . She went down to the basement . Those stairs were so treacherous . She walked around , both hoping to find him , and hoping not to . But he wasn 't there . The clothes he had worn the day before were also on the dining room chairs . That was another good sign . That meant he definitely hadn 't left last night - Vee had probably just missed him . Maybe he went to the store . He liked bananas , and he 'd eaten his last brown one yesterday . She went back outside to see if he was in the yard . The car was still there , but that was because the battery had died two months ago , and his children had not wanted to replace it . No one wanted him to drive anymore . She 'd heard that they 'd already talked to him about selling the car to Alyssa 's boyfriend . Vee couldn 't get into the garage , but she knocked hard on the door , and then listened to see if she could hear anything inside . Nothing . Barbara had been through something just like this with Dad the week before . In the early morning of June 2nd , he showed up at Alyssa 's old school in his pajamas and slippers . The cops had brought him back home . Vee and Glenn drove for about a half hour , crisscrossing Union . They went to the cemetery - always the first choice . Until recently , no matter what the weather was , he visited Mom 's grave every single day . It had been almost five years . As soon as she got Vee 's text , Barb emailed me that Dad was missing from the house and that Vee and Glenn were out looking . Just before I saw this in my inbox , my husband Frank came into my studio to say we 'd had a missed call from a 908 number . I figured it had to be Vee checking in , so I called her , and that 's how I found out Dad was on the move and no one knew where . It was around nine when I called them - they had been so helpful the other three times this had happened - the policemen had found him and brought him home before any one of us ever knew he was lost . The UCPD dispatcher told me they would send someone to the house . I called Vee , and Glenn , and they went back to Dad 's to meet the cops . Today , Mom would have turned 90 years old . We lost her on July 18 , 2005 , after a brutal and harrowing couple of months that I covered here , here , here , and here . I am very fortunate that in her final years on this earth , I made my peace with her and she with me ; her last words to me were " I love you , you 're my prize . " A person can live happily for a long time on a memory like that . Spring is always about my mother ; when the snowdrops start to peek out of the cold ground , and crocuses begin to unfold , the forsythia blossoms bright yellow and the Bradford pears start their bridal march up Northern Boulevard , their white blooms wafting on the warming breezes , my mother is close by . She 's never too far - there are times when I imagine I see her face in the mirror overlaying my own - but she breaks out in the spring . It 's her birthday , Greek Easter , Mother 's Day , our first communions … spring is and always has been her season . When I was a teenager and then a young adult , and thought I knew everything about everything , we rubbed each other the wrong way , often . As stubborn as my mother was ( she was , after all , born on the cusp of Aries and Taurus ) , I could match her . We would yell and carry on ; she 'd forbid me to do one thing or another , and I would do it any way . I honed my passive - aggressive skills at her knee . Those battles were great training for life . It wasn 't until I was older , and we made our peace with each other , that I recognized what a boon her fighting spirit was to me . When I was young , I felt thwarted by her restrictions and demands and opinions ; in retrospect , I see that her fighting spirit was what made my life possible . I decided sometime around the fifth or sixth grade that I wanted to go to the High School of Art and Design . The twin sisters of a grade school classmate had been accepted to A & D , and when I heard about it , I wanted nothing more than to go to a school where I could draw all the time . I told my folks , and I think they were hoping I would get over it , the way I got over wanting to be a nurse ( when I was six ) or a Maryknoll Missionary nun ( when I was eight ) . Fast forward to eighth grade , and taking the diocesan placement tests in mid - autumn ( for the Catholic high schools ) ; my choices were Mater Christi ( where almost all my friends would go ) , The Mary Louis Academy ( where my close friend Carol was trying to persuade me to go ) , and St . Agnes ( where I REALLY did not want to go , but I needed to list three schools ) . I did very well on the test , and would have no problem going to the school of my choice . In January , I had the placement test and portfolio submission for the High School of Art & Design . I 'd worked on my portfolio all during my Christmas vacation with Our Lady of Sorrows ' third grade - and - art teacher , Miss Mary Biedermann . She helped me matte all my artwork while listening to Leonard Cohen songs ( a revelation ! ) and eating brie ( ditto ! ! ) . It was a glimpse of what a student artist 's life might be like and I was hungry for it . I wondered in later years if the nuns knew that Miss Biedermann had helped me ; she did so outside of class and on her own time , in her own home . I travelled by myself on the subway with my art and supplies in hand ; she picked me up in her car near Borough Hall on Queens Boulevard to take me to her place in Richmond Hill . I do not remember how or by whom the arrangements for all of this extracurricular activity were made . Miss Biedermann wasn 't even my teacher - my middle sister Nancy was in her third grade class - but , at some point , my parents had to be involved with the planning . I remember bringing home the day 's matted work and showing what I 'd done to my mom and dad ; I remember thinking they did not really understand what I was doing , but at least they were not fighting me . At that point , I don 't they thought I would get into A & D ; they knew I loved to draw , but I don 't know how talented they thought I was , or - even if I was talented enough - whether this was a path from which I could be diverted . There were no artists in my family ; there was no road map for them , or me , to follow . They were not sold on the idea of me being an artist … but time could change things , and anyway , maybe I wouldn 't get into A & D . It wasn 't over at OLS , though ; Sister Mary Dorothy was incensed by my choice . She called my home while I was in school to speak to my mother . She yelled at my mother , carried on about how my mother was letting me ruin my life , that I wasn 't old enough to make such a choice , and on and on ; she pulled every manipulative trick in the book to try to get my mother to change her mind , or better yet , change my mind for me . Share this : Share on Facebook ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Twitter ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on LinkedIn ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Skype ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Tumblr ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Google + ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Pinterest ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Reddit ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on WhatsApp ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Pocket ( Opens in new window ) Click to email ( Opens in new window ) Click to print ( Opens in new window ) Like this : Like Loading . . . Reblog : What Is Love ? 11 We met for the first time in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art . I was there with my sketchbook , drawing the massive Gaston Lachaise bronze nude , an Amazon standing with her hands on her hips , surveying the territory ( I really wish I had kept those sketchbooks ) . A voice behind me asked me what I was drawing ; I turned and told him ; we introduced ourselves ; we spent the rest of the afternoon walking MOMA , showing each other our favorite paintings ; he walked me down Fifth Avenue to the subway stop by the main library on 42nd Street . He asked me for my phone number , asked if he could kiss me . I said yes , we kissed , and that was it . When I got home that afternoon , I told my mom I had met the man I was going to marry . Six years later , we did . Thirty - four years later , here we are . It all goes by so fast ; one day , you 're seventeen years old , drawing in the museum , and then you turn around and you 're middle - aged , looking back at forty years with the love of your life and praying for forty more . Some days are interminable ( days when you 're waiting for test results , days when a parent dies , or a job is lost , or you find out you have to move from a place you 've called home for twenty years ) … but how then do years fly by like torn - out pages on the wind ? Every breath , every kiss , every quarrel , every walk in the park and movie watched and meal shared , every laugh , every tear , bridges that first moment , that " What are you drawing ? " moment , with this one , right here , right now . These moments are tied together , and tie us together , like the ribbon that joined our stephana , the crowns we wore as we took our first walk as husband and wife . We have our crowns still , sewn into a linen pillowcase that I embroidered with our initials and wedding date , carefully tucked into the drawer of my maternal grandmother 's tabletop shrine . We wed at the same altar where my parents said their vows , almost twenty - five years to the day before we said ours . All these moments , and days , and years , all are joined and twined into a garland of life and love and joy and tears . And THAT is what love is . It 's made of air , water , flesh , earth , fire , time , effort , grace , joy , pain , grief , laughter , stubbornness , tenacity , art , music , dark chocolate , good red wine , and whatever else is important enough for you to feel compelled to share with your full heart and your open mind . It 's what we are here for . |
That day is a blur ; it was supposed to be my day of rest , after going out to Union to search for Dad on Saturday , Sunday , Monday . I had set Wednesday as my return to work , if we didn 't find him . I had very mixed feelings about going back to work . I couldn 't stay out indefinitely ; what if we never find him ? Sometimes , people who go missing are never , ever found . They just disappear without a trace . How does a person just disappear ? The laws of physics tell us that matter cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system ; therefore , he can 't just be gone . He is somewhere in the Escheresque universe in which I 've been living since 8 : 40 Friday morning ; I just can 't find my way to him . The angles are all wrong , they are impossible , incomprehensible . I 've been saying : " My dad is missing " . I could just as easily say : " I 'm missing my Dad " and mean it in all its double - entendred glory ; he 's missing ; I miss him ; oops , have I missed him ? What am I missing ? When someone goes missing , what happens to the people who are missing them ? What do they do ? Do they return to their jobs ? Do they shop for groceries on the way home from work ? Do they still buy Metrocards , and make sure that there 's milk in the refrigerator for breakfast the next morning ? Do they plan their meals for the coming week ? What about the laundry ? Do they carry on , do they do all of these things , all the while waiting for a call from the police or the FBI or a hospital or a morgue that their loved one or their loved one 's body has been found ? Or do they simply sit still ? Do they wait by the telephone , or stake out a spot in front of the computer , searching , researching , unable to move ? Do they take their cellphones into the shower ? Do they take showers ? Whatever I am doing , I feel like I should be doing something else instead . What if I 'm doing the wrong things , and that 's why I can 't find the right angle ? Is my approach all wrong ? I 've never known anyone else who had this happen . I have no experts to consult . I need a roadmap for this terra incognita where we are marooned . My plan for Tuesday was to talk to the detectives in the morning and get them to set the bloodhounds looking for my father . We were in Day 5 ; Dad had been missing for ninety - six hours ( I had decided that , when we got to one hundred hours , I would switch to counting days ) . Frank and I awoke to the alarm , took our showers , ate our breakfast , drank our coffee , shared the New York Times , watched Weather Channel , just like we do every day . It was all so nice and normal . I turned on my computer to check email . I had messages from my friend Janice asking if there 'd been any word ( no ) ; from my friend Peg , who pointed out how easily the elderly become invisible to the rest of us , allowing as how if Dad had gone out in his pajamas , someone might remember having seen him ( he had done that already , the week before ) ; from Nancy , letting us know that she , Chris and Grant would be in New Jersey by around 2 that afternoon . She added that Chris suggested that one way to get Dad back would be to buy and install an air conditioner in his dining room ( Dad was legendarily spartan about heating and cooling ) . The search had become its own creature , apart from Dad ; Dad and the search for Dad were two separate beings . There had been moments when I felt we were searching just for the sake of doing something . It wasn 't that I thought our efforts were useless or hopeless ; there was a small ( and shrinking ) part of me that thought we might yet find him , and find him alive . Surely there was a reasonable explanation for him being missing ; the Laws of the Conservation of Matter decreed that he was still somewhere in the known universe . Since Friday , I had been dealing with the unknowingness of my situation by trying to control those things I could . To be effective , to move forward , I had to be dispassionate about the alternatives that lay before us . I had to be on task , I had to manage time well , I had to ruthlessly prioritize . It was like managing the store ( people / product / operations ) , except this really was life and death . I wasn 't alone ; I had lots of help , all the help I could ask for ; my husband , my siblings and sibs - in - law , their children , our friends were living through this with me ; but I felt so terribly alone . Okay , so the detectives would have dogs and helicopters … Det . Moutis said that we should register for a Silver Alert . I said I 'd set it up if he sent me a link . Monday night , when I got home from New Jersey , before we had dinner , Frank and I were talking about places that George and Barbara and Alyssa and Kevin and Glenn and the neighbors and I couldn 't get into to search on our own . Frank had made a list of the kinds of places that should be searched ; abandoned buildings within a reasonable radius ; houses that had been foreclosed upon , and were vacant ; garages , sheds , outbuildings , even on occupied properties - we 'd had a cat years ago who had gotten locked in a neighbor 's garage by accident , and he 'd been missing for three days before the neighbor returned , opened the garage , and out came our Patch . Maybe Dad crawled into or under an abandoned car in a foreclosed garage and has been unable to get out and come home . Maybe he fell through a rotted floor in a vacant , derelict house . Maybe he got lost again , and went into a house that he thought was his , except it was empty , and now he thought we had sold all of his things or that he had lost the house to taxes . When we had his income taxes done earlier that spring , he got confused , and thought the new accountant was there to take his house away . Maybe he was looking for Mom . My email to Det . Moutis crossed with his email to me giving me the web address for setting up a Silver Alert . I should have guessed it - www . silveralert . org - and I can 't remember now why I couldn 't . I registered my dad for the Silver Alert and uploaded the picture that we 'd used on his flyers . I emailed the link to Det . Moutis and all my sibs with the login and password . For some reason - and I don 't know if it still works this way - the login and password were only good for an hour , and I had to re - log - in and re - upload his picture once the hour was up . I called my contact at Union 's Channel 12 to give her Dad 's information and the Facebook page URLs so she could do a screengrab of the flyer . I promised to follow up with a flyer by email , in case the screengrab wasn 't sufficiently clear . Lexi promised to get the information on the air that day . Janet and Wally were at Dad 's , getting ready to leave for Maryland , since Nancy was coming up . Someone had to be in Maryland to take care of the total of five cats and one dog between the two households , so Janet and Nancy tag - teamed . I think that George and Barbara were both back at work - it 's so hard to remember now , and my cell phone and text records aren 't clear . Alyssa had finals coming up , so she was back in school . John was planning to arrive on Thursday . Maybe we 'd find Dad by then . The detectives had arrived , with the bloodhound and his handler from the Essex County Canine Unit . It was mid - day . They 'd had to wait for the bloodhound to come from the next county , because Union County didn 't have one of their own . The handler , wearing latex gloves , took my father 's old worn pajamas outside , and spread the top and bottom out on the lawn in front of Dad 's house . ( The image I conjured for myself of my father 's nightclothes spread out on the lush grass is indelibly imprinted on my mind 's eye . ) The handler wears gloves so that he doesn 't transfer his own scent particles to the scent article . I am in my living room . I am waiting , too . I text Glenn ( not wanting to tie up the phone ) ; he has heard nothing , and is getting anxious . They have not been gone long . The bloodhound veered left at the head of the path , into the woods , without hesitation . They went deep , deeper , following my father 's scent , over brambles , and weeds , and thickets of vines , into the heavy brush . They found him lying on the ground . He said it would have been impossible to find him without the bloodhound . The brush and tangles of vines and weeds were more than two feet high ; Dad had sat down on a log , taken off his shoes , and either lay down or fell back . He was on the ground , his glasses and tan hat were off to the side , his watch still on his wrist . He was clothed except for his shoes , which were on the ground next to the log . They would have to confirm his identity with dental records . He had been out in the elements for more than one hundred hours . The coroner would later say that he had almost certainly died the first day . That would account for the lack of sightings , I thought to myself . Nancy , Chris , and Grant arrived at Dad 's house at about the time that the detectives were calling me . I must have called Janet and Walter , John and Cheryl , Barbara and George , but I don 't remember doing so . Frank came home sometime in the late afternoon and I told him . I am sure I was crying , but I don 't remember . I texted my friends . I called the store and told Emery that they had probably found my father , and I wouldn 't be coming in on Wednesday after all . Janet and Wally are due in from Maryland at about noon . I have to make some calls before I leave . I 'll be on the 9 : 47AM LIRR to Penn , and pick up the 10 : 37 NJT train to Roselle Park . That will get me to Jersey at about twenty past eleven . I 'll have the chance to get a couple of things done here before I leave , and to get a couple of things done at Dad 's before Janet and Wally arrive . I call the UCPD . The dispatcher recognizes my voice . I ask to speak to the desk sergeant . I verify that the new platoon has my dad 's photo . I tell them we are continuing our search today , and that I need to speak to the detectives when they come in . I can 't listen . I love her , and would have spared her this news if I didn 't feel I had to prepare her for a bad outcome . But , I have my own burden of fear to carry , and it is heavy enough . I detach myself carefully , tell her I have to leave for New Jersey to continue the search , and promise to keep her informed . George and Glenn are waiting for me at Roselle Park . As we edge out of the parking lot , I look at each of them and ask if they mind if I speak very freely . They both nod for me to go ahead . " I think that if we find Dad , we won 't find him alive . We may not ever find him at all . He 's been gone too long . " Glenn says that he didn 't want to be the first one to say that , but he agrees . So does George . They are both relieved that I have said this out loud . I ask George if he thinks Barbara and Alyssa are preparing themselves . He isn 't sure . I tell him about my conversation with Barb in the A & P parking lot on Sunday , when I asked about Alyssa . We get to Dad 's and open up the windows to air it out . The weather 's been beautiful since Dad disappeared ; there was only a brief shower on Saturday , late afternoon ; otherwise , it 's been sunny and not too hot . Glenn 's been taking care of the mail over the weekend , not letting it pile up on the porch . The neighbors all know about Dad , and have walked the woods and the neighborhood themselves . Ron , the neighbor across the street , tells us about a shelter in Elizabeth ; maybe Dad is there . George 's neighbor Joanne had mentioned one too . Both places were on the list that Nancy and Janet have been calling all weekend . None of the neighbors , or the shopkeepers , or the cemetery workers saw him Friday morning . It 's like Dad walked out of his door and into thin air . I have been playing phone tag with the detectives through the day . Finally , I get to speak to them briefly . They give me their direct dial numbers and email addresses . I talk to them about where we looked for Dad over the weekend . Detective George Moutis told me that everywhere he and his partner , Detective Ken Elliot , canvassed , we had already covered . He and his crew had seen scores of our flyers all over Union . And they had fewer leads than we did - they had no sightings at all . They hadn 't come across even one person who had seen Dad on Friday , or since . Janet and Walter are going back to Maryland in the morning ; Nancy , Chris and Grant will be up in the early afternoon . Barbara is at work , and Alyssa is at school . John is flying in on Thursday . I am going home to rest for a day , and go back to work on Wednesday , unless of course Dad is found . When I get home , I tell Frank about what the day has held . We eat our dinner , watch a movie or some South Park episodes ( I don 't remember , and I think I fell asleep ) . Before bed , I email the detectives ' contact information to all the sibs and spouses . I am up by 6AM . Dad has been missing for forty - six hours . I take my shower , check my email and begin with my plan for the day . I spend the early morning tracking down local media outlets - broadcast and cable television , radio , newspapers - and emailing them flyers . By 9AM I have contacted local channels 2 , 4 , 5 , 7 , 9 , 11 and NJ 12 ( who said they needed a press release from the police - that will be my first thing Monday morning , if we haven 't found him by then ) . I contact the NY Post and the NY Daily News . I don 't bother with the Times because this is happening in Jersey and they won 't care . If he is still missing tomorrow , I will also hit the local New Jersey newspapers - I can look them up and get their contact information when I get back tonight . A bit past 9AM , I talk to the dispatch officer at the police station at the beginning of the day shift . The new platoon is out with pictures of Dad in their cars . My mom 's best friend Thea has made the same arrangements at the 110th Precinct in Corona , just in case Dad ( somehow ) did make there . It is looking less and less like a realistic scenario , but we all feel the need to cover all the bases . If I thought he could come up with the idea of flying somewhere , I 'd have posted at the airports too . I just want to find him . All the sibs have the flyer in their email inboxes , and all the sibs are forwarding it to their address books with instructions to pass it on . All of us on Facebook have forwarded the page I created last night . Alyssa made up her own page , using the same layout , and called it Help Me Find My Grandfather . She forwarded the link to all of her Facebook friends and they are in turn forwarding it to theirs . The page has over a hundred " likes " already , most of them Alyssa 's friends in Union . John and Cheryl are tweeting it on Twitter , Barbara is posting it on her fitness boards . Barb emailed me first thing this morning that she 'd had a dream that their cat Dallas was missing . She said she found her on the side of Dad 's house , alive , buried in some snow . Barbara says she is going to look by the side of Dad 's house this morning , again , just in case . At this point , we know that if Dad hasn 't been taken into an ER or shelter by someone , his mobility will be limited , he will be exhausted , hungry , dehydrated , off his meds for more than forty - eight hours . Our best hope for finding him is that he is resting somewhere - a park bench , bleachers , a shady spot under a tree . We covered that ground yesterday and will do it again today . We 're going to visit some of the same places , in case there are new people there who don 't know about Dad . Before I leave , I email Nancy and ask her to find email addresses for Our Lady of Sorrows and P . S . 19 in Corona , and send them the flyer with a note . I ask her to get email addresses for the hospitals and shelters on her call list , and send them the flyer . Everyone at these places is aware that we are looking for Dad ; it will help keep him in the front of their mind if they have a picture to refer to , and the knowledge that there is a family who desperately wants to find him . Barbara offers to fax the flyers from work to any place that doesn 't have an email address . The guy at reception today is the same guy who was there yesterday , and he still hasn 't seen Dad and there have been no John Does admitted . Our flyer is posted on the wall behind the desk , behind the thick Plexiglas window that separates him from me . I use the hospital rest room and go back out to the car . George takes me back to his house , where he and Glenn are working replacing a faucet , and Barb , Alyssa and I leave in Barb 's car . At 2 : 02 PM , my cell rings . It 's George . Patty from Café Z thinks she saw Dad near the Lowe 's on Morris Avenue in Union . It 's two miles from his house , but Dad has walked that far in good weather many times . George and Glenn each get into their cars and separately approach the location Patty described from opposite sides of Morris Avenue . They don 't want to miss him . Walter calls me at 2 : 08 and I tell him about the sighting . I am talking with both him and Janet when Glenn calls me . I switch to Glenn 's call . George is coming up in the other direction , sees Glenn 's car , sees the old man , sees it 's not Dad . They go to Café Z to tell Patty , and to thank her . It 's the only real glimmer of hope we 've had in fifty - four hours . They go back to the house , deflated . I take the 10 : 03AM from Murray Hill to Penn . I bring an extra $ 50 and the Capital One credit card statement so I can stop at the bank at the corner of 7th Avenue and 33rd Street in between trains . The NJT train won 't leave until 11 : 07AM anyway . That 'll give me almost half an hour to cross the street and pay the bill on its due date . It 'll also add the slightest semblance of normalcy to my increasingly surreal situation . When I get to Penn , I go to the NJT ticket machines and get two off - peak round trips ( I can always use them , is my very practical thought ) . I go up the escalator , turn left and walk to the Capital One on the next corner . It is empty at 10 : 35AM . There is one teller on , and no line . I pass the statement and my fifty - dollar bill under the bulletproof glass . She takes the statement and the money , inputs the account information , completes my transaction , and slides me my receipt . We go back to Dad 's , so I can walk around the house myself . I just want to see for myself how he left things . I know this is not logical , because since Dad left , Vee has been here , Glenn has been here , the policemen have been here , detectives have been here , George and Barbara and Alyssa have been here , and maybe some other people , too . We leave Dad 's , grab a quick bite at Galloping Hill , go back to George and Barbara 's house , and go over what 's been done so far . They walked the woods by the house yesterday , and again today . They walked the woods by Washington School again this morning . They 've been driving around the neighborhood . Barb thought she saw Dad when she was out driving and looking . It was about 7AM . She was driving up by Union Station , on Morris Avenue , when she saw an elderly man walking . She slowed down , and took a good look . She couldn 't really tell ; he had his hat pulled down , and he wasn 't facing her . The man 's clothing was similar … . could it be Dad ? She got out of the car , and went up to him , looked at his face , closely . I 'd brought my staple gun and packaging tape with me from home . We have to make a flyer for posting . I ask Barb if I can use her computer . I go downstairs to work . I remember that Alyssa has recent pictures of Dad on her Facebook page - she and Dad visited the cemetery right after one of the huge snowstorms this past winter , and I know that there are a couple of full - face ones . I right - click copy the one where he and Alyssa are looking right at the camera , paste it into an image editor , and crop Alyssa out . I close in on his face and center it . I type my text , fine - tune the spacing and size of the text so it can be easily read from a passing car , and print out about a hundred of them . The first place we visit is the cemetery . We post a flyer on the tree by Mom 's grave and ask her to watch over Dad , and to please help us . We know that if he can be helped , she will see to it . We go to the office and speak to the manager ; he knows my dad . He has seen Dad visit Mom 's grave every day in every kind of weather . He says all the groundskeepers know who Dad is , too . He asks the ones on duty if they saw him . No one can remember if he was there yesterday or not . He promises to keep an eye out . I give him some flyers , and ask his permission to post some more around the cemetery . He agrees . I look back at him over my shoulder on my way out , and I catch the unguarded sadness on his face . We visit every park , every local body of water ( dementia patients are attracted to bodies of water , I had read somewhere , sometime ) every doctor 's office , school and playground that Alyssa ever went to with Mom and Dad , posting flyers . We go to Town Hall ( post , outside and in ) , to the library ( post on the bulletin board and on trees in the parking lot ) , up to Café Z to tell Patty , the owner , and leave her some flyers and our cell phone numbers . She knows Dad well - we 've had our family Thanksgiving dinners there since the year Mom died . We drive up and down endless streets , posting . We leave flyers with whomever we speak with in Union . We post more . In Westfield . In Kenilworth . In Cranford . In Garwood . The first time Dad went for a walk where the cops brought him home , they found him up by Saint Demetrios , almost three miles from his house , a few blocks away from the precinct house . That was almost three months ago , in late March . Two patrolmen just starting their midday shift saw an elderly man who seemed confused and went up to him and asked him if he was okay . He couldn 't figure out where he was , but he knew who he was and where he lived , so they took him home and called Barb at work . At about 2PM , George left a voice mail on my cell to let me know what had happened , and that he had sent Glenn over to Dad 's to look in on him and make sure he was all right . I called Dad as soon as I picked up the voice mail , but only got the answering machine ( with my mother 's voice on the outgoing message ; we 'd never changed it ) . I called Barb , and we tried to figure it out ; we thought that Dad must have been on his way to the cemetery , which meant he was walking for about four hours , if he followed his habit of leaving the house at around 8AM . He had probably just continued on Chestnut Street instead of taking the left fork on to Galloping Hill , at the Five Points intersection where Galloping Hill Road and Chestnut cross the end of Salem Road . He was found all the way up on Rahway Avenue , past the entrance to the Garden State , past the turnoff on to Stuyvesant and Cioffi 's , almost as far from the house as Alyssa 's high school and Café Z . We drive and walk and post flyers for a few more hours , all over Union . By Dad 's house . Around the corners , both ways . On Salem Road . On Chestnut Street , by his bank and the vegetable store where he buys his bananas and the Dunkin Donuts . By Eisenstat 's office on Galloping Hill Road . I am finally exhausted , and George drives me to the station so I can go home . We post flyers all along Chestnut Street as we go . Tomorrow , we will do this again . Tagscaregiving , Come to Me , Duty , elderly parents , faith , family , father , friends , grief , home , hope , joy , loss , love , Matthew 11 : 28 , mercy , missing , Missing Dad , missing persons , parents , patience , prayer , responsibility , search , search dogs , siblings , strength , trust The police meet Vee and Glenn at Dad 's house . They call me for details about Dad and where he would be likely to go . They want to know where he shops , where he banks , if he has friends he liked to see , who his doctor and dentist are , which area schools are the ones Alyssa has attended ( since he had shown up at her elementary school in his pajamas just eight days before ) , what church he attends , and anything else that might help . I have to leave soon , to go to work ; I am the manager - in - training at the Papyrus flagship store on Broadway and 76th Street in Manhattan . I am scheduled for noon until closing , which means I need to be on the 10 : 33 train . I would call out if we weren 't so short - staffed . As it is , our full - time keyholder , Mary , will be alone until I get there . Emery has a travel day and is going to be at both of his other stores giving performance reviews . Jacque isn 't scheduled until four , and since her review is supposed to be at the Columbus Avenue store , she probably isn 't even going to get to Broadway until almost five . If I call out , Mary will be alone either until Jacque comes in , or until Emery can get there . That just won 't work - that store is just too busy , and cannot run with only one person on the floor for six hours - is there anybody else who can cover me on short notice ? No . ( So , what would happen if I got hit by a truck on the way there ? Would they find someone then ? ) I 've managed the floor by myself for hours , or worked a thirteen - hour open - to - close shift when staff calls out or just doesn 't show up ; that 's precisely why I don 't do that to other people . Not even today , with this good a reason . I call Mary on my way to the train to tell her my father is missing . She said , " Oh , did they find him ? " I said , NO , HE IS MISSING . No one knows where he is . I get to Penn before eleven . I have no news from anyone . I have enough time to try to find a charger for my phone . I hadn 't charged it the night before and I 've been on it almost the whole morning . I take the local to 79th Street , stop at the T - Mobile store to see if I can find what I need . No dice - the sales associate practically laughs at my three - year - old no - frills Samsung . I try the electronics store across the street . They don 't have one either , but I do replace my broken watchstrap with a new black leather one . I never bring my cellphone on to the sales floor , but I make an exception this day . I am fielding texts from my sisters asking if there is any news , while I am emailing back and forth with my district manager and Corporate about a man who had attempted to make a fraudulent return in our store . In between , I am ringing up Father 's Day cards for customers . Frank checks in with me a couple of times , to see if I 've heard anything , to hear how I sound . He knows me better than anyone else on God 's green earth . He can pick things up in my voice that even I don 't know are there . Such are the blessings of a long - term happy marriage . " I haven 't heard anything from anyone . I 'm going to Port Authority after work , in case Dad got on a bus . " ( I 'm scared and I don 't know what else to do . ) " No news . Yes , thank you for offering , please come and close the store with Jacque . I don 't know where my father is , and I don 't know what is happening . " I grab a cab on Broadway , and I call home from my cell as the cab makes its way downtown . I am going to Port Authority on the small chance that somehow , my dad tried to come to see me in New York . Maybe he waited at our old bus stop , got on the 113S bus , got out at Port Authority and … . what ? Did I really think he could find his way to the 7 train , go to Corona , or to Flushing ? No , I didn 't . But in case he did , I need to tell the cops to be on the lookout . I hear the worry in my husband 's voice . I have to do this anyway . My mind 's ear hears him saying , " Come home now " when what he is really saying out loud is good luck , be careful . The cabdriver has overheard my conversation , and asks me if I am okay . I tell him my dad disappeared that morning and has been missing all day . I tell him why I am going to Port Authority . He asks me my father 's name so he can keep him in his prayers . We take the turn east on to 42nd Street , past Holy Cross Church , and at the southwest corner of 8th Avenue , he lets me out . I find the police station in the terminal . I speak to the desk sergeant , who asks me to take a seat and wait for the officer who will help me . She is very understanding and kind - she has heard this story before ( but it was never my story before ) . I give her a description of my father . I pull out the wallet - sized studio photo of my whole family that my brother had set up for Dad 's 80th birthday . She photocopies it . When she comes back , I tell her that the day we took the photo was the first time in twelve years that we had all been under the same roof . The only other picture I have of Dad in my wallet is the one from December 1972 , with him and Frank and me all dressed up for a gala dinner dance celebrating Our Lady of Sorrows ' 100th anniversary . In that picture , Dad is five years younger than I am now . I call my mom 's best friend , Thea , as I am leaving the police station - she works at the 110th Precinct in Corona , our old neighborhood . She still lives next door to the house I grew up in , on 42nd Avenue . She will put the word out at the 110 , just in case Dad somehow finds his way " home " to Corona . As soon as her husband hears the news about my dad , he takes a folding chair downstairs and sets it up in front of his building . He will wait there until about midnight , until he is exhausted and has to go upstairs to sleep . He is determined that , if my father comes walking down 42nd Avenue , he will intercept him and return him safely to Union , New Jersey . I won 't find this out for a while yet , but throughout the day , Frank has been trying to find ways to help me . Friday is one of his days at NYU 's School of Medicine , where he is the computer tech for a research group in the Psychiatry department . He has been asking the doctors who work there how he can best help me through whatever is coming . On his way home from work that Friday , he goes up to a police officer and tells him about my missing dad . The cop gives him an outline of what to expect and when , if Dad isn 't found on the first day . Frank is taking the long view ; he already knows that if Dad isn 't found before nightfall , the outcome is unlikely to be positive . When I get to Penn , I stop into the police station on the Long Island Railroad concourse , and tell them my story . They are very kind and , as the Port Authority police did , they take down my information . I get on the 7 : 49 Port Washington train to go home . I get in at about twenty past eight . Frank has dinner waiting for me , keeping warm on the stove . I eat , we talk . Unless we hear something tonight or early tomorrow , I will go to New Jersey in the morning to search for Dad . I will be with Barbara , George , and Alyssa . They , and Glenn , and Alyssa 's boyfriend Kevin have walked the woods by the house and near the Washington School several times already to see if they can find any sign at all of Dad . After dinner , I turn on my computer . All of us sibs and spouses discuss next steps by email . Nancy and her husband , Chris , are thinking of coming up , but I think it 's better if they stay in Maryland for the time being . Their eleven - year - old son , Grant , still has another week or so of school . Nancy and Janet ( who lives two doors down from her , with her husband Walter and their four cats ) can make calls from home - they will call hospitals , senior centers , homeless shelters , soup kitchens , urgent care centers , clinics , and any other place they can think of to see if there are any John Does matching Dad 's description . My 88 year old dad wandered off from his home and has been missing since 8AM Friday morning . He was gone when his morning caregiver arrived . Our extended family and friends and the Union County police are looking for him . I visited the station at Port Authority and talked to the PA police ( just in case he got on a bus , but I doubt it ) . I notified a friend of mine who works in our old home precinct in Corona ( just in case he tries to go back " home " ) . My father has been missing for more than sixteen hours . It 's dark out . He is almost always cold , even on hot summer days . I try not to think about this . I do not succeed . Sometime between dawn and eight AM on Friday the eleventh of June , Tony Karabaic left his home to take a walk . He locked the inside door and the porch door . He didn 't set the alarm because sometimes he would forget how to make it stop . He walked down Huntington , made a left at the corner of Livingston , and walked down past Forest Drive to the shortcut path through the woods to Salem Road . At 8 : 10 that same morning , his morning caregiver , Vee the RN , arrived . She rang the bell ; no answer . She took out her key and let herself in . She stood in the living room and called his name ; no answer . He was hard of hearing ; maybe he just didn 't hear her . His tan corduroy recliner - its worn fringed throw flung haphazardly over it - was empty . The piles of papers on the coffee table were in the same places they were in yesterday . Nothing seemed to be disturbed . There was no radio on - maybe he wasn 't at home ? She would have to look . She walked into the dining room . His pajamas were draped over the back of a dining chair . That was good - the last time he went out for an early morning walk , he was wearing his pajamas and slippers . Vee went into the kitchen . No dishes in the sink or on the table , but the bowl and glass were in the dish drainer . Had he eaten his breakfast ? Where was he ? She glanced over to the kitchen table , to see if his pills were in the gold glass ashtray on the table . There were a couple left in there - she looked to see which ones they were . Good - the afternoon and evening doses of Sinemet , his Parkinson 's med . The morning dose , the Xalatan , and the Felodipine were gone . She walked out of the kitchen to check the small bedroom , where his granddaughter Alyssa 's toys and drawings were . The high - riser bed was made up , with its hand - crocheted afghan neatly tucked beneath the foam bunker cushions , the little stuffed cats and bears neatly arranged atop them . He sometimes took a nap here later in the day , but this bed hadn 't been slept on lately . He was nowhere to be seen . Vee went back into the living room , and up the stairs . She turned left at the top of the stairs , to look in his bedroom . The room reminded her of a monk 's cell , with its spartan twin bed , simple chest , and holy pictures on the wall . The bedsheets and blankets were rumpled ; the room bore the warm , heavy scent of sleep . Okay , it looked like he had spent the night here - that was something . She went into the master bedroom , where his late wife , Georgia , used to sleep . There were papers and envelopes neatly arranged on the white chenille bedspread , but no Tony . She looked in the little office . She looked in the extra bedroom where his kids slept when they stayed for the weekend . She entered the bathroom , pulled the shower curtain aside , checked the bathtub . She went down to the basement . Those stairs were so treacherous . She walked around , both hoping to find him , and hoping not to . But he wasn 't there . The clothes he had worn the day before were also on the dining room chairs . That was another good sign . That meant he definitely hadn 't left last night - Vee had probably just missed him . Maybe he went to the store . He liked bananas , and he 'd eaten his last brown one yesterday . She went back outside to see if he was in the yard . The car was still there , but that was because the battery had died two months ago , and his children had not wanted to replace it . No one wanted him to drive anymore . She 'd heard that they 'd already talked to him about selling the car to Alyssa 's boyfriend . Vee couldn 't get into the garage , but she knocked hard on the door , and then listened to see if she could hear anything inside . Nothing . Barbara had been through something just like this with Dad the week before . In the early morning of June 2nd , he showed up at Alyssa 's old school in his pajamas and slippers . The cops had brought him back home . Vee and Glenn drove for about a half hour , crisscrossing Union . They went to the cemetery - always the first choice . Until recently , no matter what the weather was , he visited Mom 's grave every single day . It had been almost five years . As soon as she got Vee 's text , Barb emailed me that Dad was missing from the house and that Vee and Glenn were out looking . Just before I saw this in my inbox , my husband Frank came into my studio to say we 'd had a missed call from a 908 number . I figured it had to be Vee checking in , so I called her , and that 's how I found out Dad was on the move and no one knew where . It was around nine when I called them - they had been so helpful the other three times this had happened - the policemen had found him and brought him home before any one of us ever knew he was lost . The UCPD dispatcher told me they would send someone to the house . I called Vee , and Glenn , and they went back to Dad 's to meet the cops . Today , Mom would have turned 90 years old . We lost her on July 18 , 2005 , after a brutal and harrowing couple of months that I covered here , here , here , and here . I am very fortunate that in her final years on this earth , I made my peace with her and she with me ; her last words to me were " I love you , you 're my prize . " A person can live happily for a long time on a memory like that . Spring is always about my mother ; when the snowdrops start to peek out of the cold ground , and crocuses begin to unfold , the forsythia blossoms bright yellow and the Bradford pears start their bridal march up Northern Boulevard , their white blooms wafting on the warming breezes , my mother is close by . She 's never too far - there are times when I imagine I see her face in the mirror overlaying my own - but she breaks out in the spring . It 's her birthday , Greek Easter , Mother 's Day , our first communions … spring is and always has been her season . When I was a teenager and then a young adult , and thought I knew everything about everything , we rubbed each other the wrong way , often . As stubborn as my mother was ( she was , after all , born on the cusp of Aries and Taurus ) , I could match her . We would yell and carry on ; she 'd forbid me to do one thing or another , and I would do it any way . I honed my passive - aggressive skills at her knee . Those battles were great training for life . It wasn 't until I was older , and we made our peace with each other , that I recognized what a boon her fighting spirit was to me . When I was young , I felt thwarted by her restrictions and demands and opinions ; in retrospect , I see that her fighting spirit was what made my life possible . I decided sometime around the fifth or sixth grade that I wanted to go to the High School of Art and Design . The twin sisters of a grade school classmate had been accepted to A & D , and when I heard about it , I wanted nothing more than to go to a school where I could draw all the time . I told my folks , and I think they were hoping I would get over it , the way I got over wanting to be a nurse ( when I was six ) or a Maryknoll Missionary nun ( when I was eight ) . Fast forward to eighth grade , and taking the diocesan placement tests in mid - autumn ( for the Catholic high schools ) ; my choices were Mater Christi ( where almost all my friends would go ) , The Mary Louis Academy ( where my close friend Carol was trying to persuade me to go ) , and St . Agnes ( where I REALLY did not want to go , but I needed to list three schools ) . I did very well on the test , and would have no problem going to the school of my choice . In January , I had the placement test and portfolio submission for the High School of Art & Design . I 'd worked on my portfolio all during my Christmas vacation with Our Lady of Sorrows ' third grade - and - art teacher , Miss Mary Biedermann . She helped me matte all my artwork while listening to Leonard Cohen songs ( a revelation ! ) and eating brie ( ditto ! ! ) . It was a glimpse of what a student artist 's life might be like and I was hungry for it . I wondered in later years if the nuns knew that Miss Biedermann had helped me ; she did so outside of class and on her own time , in her own home . I travelled by myself on the subway with my art and supplies in hand ; she picked me up in her car near Borough Hall on Queens Boulevard to take me to her place in Richmond Hill . I do not remember how or by whom the arrangements for all of this extracurricular activity were made . Miss Biedermann wasn 't even my teacher - my middle sister Nancy was in her third grade class - but , at some point , my parents had to be involved with the planning . I remember bringing home the day 's matted work and showing what I 'd done to my mom and dad ; I remember thinking they did not really understand what I was doing , but at least they were not fighting me . At that point , I don 't they thought I would get into A & D ; they knew I loved to draw , but I don 't know how talented they thought I was , or - even if I was talented enough - whether this was a path from which I could be diverted . There were no artists in my family ; there was no road map for them , or me , to follow . They were not sold on the idea of me being an artist … but time could change things , and anyway , maybe I wouldn 't get into A & D . It wasn 't over at OLS , though ; Sister Mary Dorothy was incensed by my choice . She called my home while I was in school to speak to my mother . She yelled at my mother , carried on about how my mother was letting me ruin my life , that I wasn 't old enough to make such a choice , and on and on ; she pulled every manipulative trick in the book to try to get my mother to change her mind , or better yet , change my mind for me . Share this : Share on Facebook ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Twitter ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on LinkedIn ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Skype ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Tumblr ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Google + ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Pinterest ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Reddit ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on WhatsApp ( Opens in new window ) Click to share on Pocket ( Opens in new window ) Click to email ( Opens in new window ) Click to print ( Opens in new window ) Like this : Like Loading . . . Reblog : What Is Love ? 11 We met for the first time in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art . I was there with my sketchbook , drawing the massive Gaston Lachaise bronze nude , an Amazon standing with her hands on her hips , surveying the territory ( I really wish I had kept those sketchbooks ) . A voice behind me asked me what I was drawing ; I turned and told him ; we introduced ourselves ; we spent the rest of the afternoon walking MOMA , showing each other our favorite paintings ; he walked me down Fifth Avenue to the subway stop by the main library on 42nd Street . He asked me for my phone number , asked if he could kiss me . I said yes , we kissed , and that was it . When I got home that afternoon , I told my mom I had met the man I was going to marry . Six years later , we did . Thirty - four years later , here we are . It all goes by so fast ; one day , you 're seventeen years old , drawing in the museum , and then you turn around and you 're middle - aged , looking back at forty years with the love of your life and praying for forty more . Some days are interminable ( days when you 're waiting for test results , days when a parent dies , or a job is lost , or you find out you have to move from a place you 've called home for twenty years ) … but how then do years fly by like torn - out pages on the wind ? Every breath , every kiss , every quarrel , every walk in the park and movie watched and meal shared , every laugh , every tear , bridges that first moment , that " What are you drawing ? " moment , with this one , right here , right now . These moments are tied together , and tie us together , like the ribbon that joined our stephana , the crowns we wore as we took our first walk as husband and wife . We have our crowns still , sewn into a linen pillowcase that I embroidered with our initials and wedding date , carefully tucked into the drawer of my maternal grandmother 's tabletop shrine . We wed at the same altar where my parents said their vows , almost twenty - five years to the day before we said ours . All these moments , and days , and years , all are joined and twined into a garland of life and love and joy and tears . And THAT is what love is . It 's made of air , water , flesh , earth , fire , time , effort , grace , joy , pain , grief , laughter , stubbornness , tenacity , art , music , dark chocolate , good red wine , and whatever else is important enough for you to feel compelled to share with your full heart and your open mind . It 's what we are here for . |
One friend spoke up ( We 'll call her Swemp for today . It stands for " She Who Enjoys My Pain " ) and said that she does yoga every Monday and that I should join her . Perfect . So Monday night I head out to her yoga studio . I got there a bit early , so I went in to do the bit of paperwork . The instructor asked if I knew anything about Ashtanga yoga . Nope . I just know that I 'm supposed to do some type of yoga for my condition , and Swemp said this would be good for me . He got a funny look on his face , then began to explain it . Ashtanga is one of the more challenging types of yoga . It focuses on breathing and core strength . Those who are good at it complete approximately 35 different poses , each held for five breaths , with no rest between . Instead of resting you do " transition moves " . For beginners , that transition could be to simply sit with your legs crossed . He asked if I had ever done any type of breathing excercises . I have to say , the instructor was very good . He always gave variations on the positions we were doing , so if something was too difficult for the newer folks , we could cater it to our needs . He was very encouraging , constantly reminding us that we are looking for little bits of progress , not perfection from the get - go . My philosophy exactly ! Pose after pose I did the hardest position . If my body can do it , why shouldn 't I ? Look around . Lots of other people are doing it , too . I didn 't simply sit with my legs crossed for transitions . I was hopping in and out of downward dog each and every time . I was most excited when I did the big move near the end of class : By the end of class , I was feeling great . My muscles were a little tired , just as they were supposed to be . I immediately signed up for five more classes . While Swemp looked on with a smile on her face . As we walked to our cars , she mentioned that she is usually a bit sore on Tuesdays . A good sore . Nothing to worry about . I expected this . You 're always sore when you try a new athletic activity . Tuesday morning , I woke up feeling great . No soreness . No unusual pain . Around 9 : 00 I talked to my brother on the phone . During our conversation , my arm started to hurt . With each passing minute , my arm hurt more and more . After 20 minutes I had to get off the phone . My arm and shoulder were in terrific pain , all from holding a phone up to my ear . Not a good sign . As the day went on , both arms started hurting more and more . I was mixing pancake batter for dinner and thought my arm was going to fall off . My legs began to feel sore , as well . That lactic acid was building up fast ! By 8 : 00 last night , I was a hot mess . " A bit sore " my butt ! ( Actually , I think that is the ONLY thing that isn 't sore . ) And in case you didn 't know , Day 2 is always worse than Day 1 . Swemp is on my list . She needs to know that , as my friend , she needs to speak up . When I am very actively denying my 40 years , she needs to speak up and put a quick stop to it . Something like , " Hey , Hotshot . Go look at yourself in the mirror . You ain 't no spring chicken . " would have been immensely helpful . You know I 'll go . And because I am who I am , you know I 'll do exactly the same thing , thinking , " My body is used to it now . It won 't hurt nearly so much this time . " And we all know that it most certainly will hurt just as much . The time has come . We knew it was coming . All the signs were there . But it just wasn 't the right time . . . until now . Cuckoo Maran , my little man , you are sitting on the potty . Back in the old days , we had long , lazy days at home . Potty training wasn 't fun , but it was easier . We could stay home and get it done in a relatively short amount of time . Hubby wanted to go to Disney the moment Phoenix was born . He went most years of his childhood , and he couldn 't wait to start taking our kids . I , on the other hand , wanted to wait until the youngest was five . All four kids would be great ages to go . So we compromised . We agreed that we would book the trip when Giant was completely potty trained , with no fear of accidents . I am not kidding when I tell you that Giant went to his three year check - up in a diaper . The doctor noticed , and asked , " Why is Giant still in a diaper ? Your kids are always trained well before now . " With Turken , I came to all - out hate potty training . It wasn 't really his fault . It 's just next to impossible to learn to use the restroom when you are picking kids up from school and hauling them around to and from soccer . A bathroom isn 't always readily available . at all costs . We were driving home from school one day , and Turken tells me that he peed in his carseat . OK , I can handle that . And yet , there he sat , with his pants around his ankles , all a mess , with the biggest grin you 've ever seen plastered on his face . It 's one of those parenting moments when you have a choice . Go nuts because of the complete disaster you have just encountered , or return that big ol ' grin and tell the boy how proud you are that he followed directions . Thankfully I was in a laughing mood that day , so he got a big grin . Not once did he actually go while sitting on the toilet . Today , so far , one wet pair of pants down , but he did figure out how to actually make his body pee when he wanted it to . Score TWO M & Ms for that one ! On the way home from Chicago , I called home and spoke to Phoenix . Hubby was out with Buttercup and Cuckoo , so the boys were happy . ( When Phoenix is in charge , we let them watch TV . It assures us that nothing will get broken and no fights will break out in our absence . ) I jokingly told Phoenix that I would be home between 5 : 30 and 6 : 00 , so he better have dinner on the table for me . At 5 : 10 I got a phone call . Hubby was in a tizzy , frantically searching the freezer and pantry , looking for something to cook . See , Phoenix is a stereotypical male who cannot read or exhibit expressions or emotions . He heard " have dinner ready " , so Dad was told that dinner better be ready . Phoenix got this trait from his father , so husband didn 't question Phoenix . If he would have , he would have found out that in reality , I was completely kidding . So , after I calmed Hubby down , we agreed to meet at a restaurant . A flurry of stories was thrown at me in between kisses and hugs , and I soaked up every minute of it . It had been a busy weekend . So busy , that Cuckoo hadn 't gotten much sleep , and actually fell asleep before the food came , and didn 't wake up until we put him in the carseat . It 's fun to go away , but it 's so nice to come home . Hubby is such a good dad . Despite the fact that he can be overwhelmed with 3 and a half days alone with the kids , everyone was fed ( some healthy food even ! ) , happy , and uninjured . He even reminded them to do a few loads of laundry . Score ! Each book club trip , one friend has a question or two that is meant as a " get to know you and make you think " conversation starter . This year she asked , " Did you marry your father ? " It was a great question , and took us off into all sorts of areas . My answer to it was as follows : While my dad and Hubby are both smart men who are very good with finances and enjoy history , I didn 't marry my father . Where Dad is outgoing and impulsive , Hubby is an introvert and never makes a move without a detailed , thought - out plan . ( For example , my parents married after knowing each other for two weeks . Hubby and I dated for 7 years before we tied the knot . ) My parents divorced when I was about 8 years old , but my dad never lived more than 2 miles from us . He never missed a single weekend that he was to have us . He took us roller skating on Wednesday nights ( back when roller skating was all the rage ) He did fun things with us , like a day trip to Niagrara Falls . When we would go to the pool , he didn 't sit on the deck with the adults . He jumped in and played with us . We would go to the local park to roll down the huge hill and feed the ducks . Our childhood was certainly not a breeze , but even through the rocky times , I always knew that my dad loved me more than anything . So when it was time for me to head out on my own , I knew what it was like to feel loved . I knew that I shouldn 't settle for someone who merely said he loved me . I was to look for someone who showed it . Lived it . I knew . My dad made the choice to be there for his children . To let us know that he loved us . And when God led Hubby and me together , I was able to recognize it . I was able to see that the way Hubby treated me was love . A good , healthy , enduring kind of love that needed to be held on to . And now , that husband who loves me so , is showing our daughter what to look for . To find someone who loves her . She 'll know that love when God sends it her way . And finally , after almost four years of waiting , Turken was finally old enough to go . Sakes alive , it was the best day of his life . He is normally a shy kid , but he couldn 't hold it in yesterday . He had to tell everyone , " I 'm going to Daddy 's office , and a restaurant , and a Colt 's game . " After piano lessons , we headed downtown . He didn 't stop talking the entire way there . " I 'm going to help Daddy work . What do you do at Daddy 's office ? I 'm going to have macaroni and cheese . And ice cream . I 'm going to his office , and a restaurant , and a game . I 'm not going home . We 're going downtown so I can go with Daddy all by myself . " and on and on and on . The big kids thought it was cute . At first . By the time we got to Daddy , they were ready to see him go . I didn 't even get a wave good - bye . He was so focused on getting into that office . At 9 : 45 I finally got a text telling me that the game went into overtime , and they would be getting home late . The kid is three . We were way past late already . Finally , at 10 : 45 they rolled in . Turken did not sleep one wink the whole way home . He couldn 't stop talking . This is what he looked like when he walked in the door : At 10 : 45 he unloaded his bag to tell me the story of everything in it . How he spun a wheel to get the magnet . How he was tall enough to reach the bag , so he got to keep it . And of course , how the woman made his hat . Apparantly , he didn 't stop talking for the entire 6 hours he was with Hubby . At the office , he started out by examining Hubby 's desk . He needed to know what each and every thing was . When he came to the business cards , Hubby told him that they were cards with his name on them . Turken paused ( for the first time that day ) and then said , " But I don 't see a D on it ! " ( For Daddy . He doesn 't know Hubby 's real name . ) He woke up at 7 : 25 this morning , Pacers on the brain . We went through all of his goodies again , since Cuckoo hadn 't seen them yet . He told us about Boomer ( the mascot ) falling off the ceiling , but on a swing so he didn 't get hurt . And it was dark , because they turned the lights off . He didn 't know why . He told us about Boomer making slam dunks . He told us about the greeen team winning most of the game , but blue won the game in the end . And on and on and on . Even then , I don 't think I 'll be tired of hearing him tell of his evening . His cute little voice telling his version of the highlights of the whole experience just makes me smile . It is amazing how one little date with his dad can be the most exciting event he has ever experienced . This is why we do individual dates with our children . Now , for my own fun experience . Tomorrow I leave for the annual book club trip . This year we are keeping it closer to home and heading to Chicago . The itinerary , as far as I know , includes : It 's " as far as I kow " because I didn 't have to plan any of it . I love my friends . They don 't mind letting me tag along to all of the fun things they worked hard to find and plan . Hubby and I used to be terrible eaters . We were young , healthy , childless , broke , and clueless about how to feed ourselves . We would go to the Hostess thrift store and stock up on old white bread , Twinkies , Susy - Qs , and the like . We would drink Coke by the caseful , because it was forever on super sale prices . We had a bowl of candy - filled ice cream every night before bed . We ate a ton of canned soup and frozen salisbury steak . Today , we eat home - cooked meals every day . Salisbury steak is a bad word around here . We eat ice cream at birthdays , but rarely anytime else . I don 't know the last time I 've eaten a Twinkie . I only drink water and milk , except when we eat out . Then I get a Sprite . We only eat whole wheat . A huge bowl of Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream every single night before bed . At some point I realized that I was getting older , not the athletic hottie that I used to be . I decided to change the ice cream . I went to plain chocolate or vanilla ice cream with fruit on top . Bananas , strawberries , and raisins were my new candy . ( Yes , raisins . It makes Hubby gag to even contemplate , but I love them on ice cream . Don 't judge until you 've tried it ! ) One year for Lent I gave up all snacking after dinner . I lost 5 pounds in one week . Not good . ( For me , at that time , it wasn 't . ) So , I put snacking back on the menu , but left out the ice cream . Throughout Lent , I had grapes or a nectarine . After Lent I would have microwave popcorn or peanut M & Ms . Then I got this pre - Lupus thing . My activity level dropped off , and I realized I was having an after - dinner snack out of habit . I wasn 't even hungry . I stopped eating after dinner . I haven 't lost a pound , but I haven 't gained any , either . So , I went from eating a huge bowl of calorie - and fat - filled ice cream every night to not eating any snacks at all . Sure , it took many , many years . But here I am . And I don 't feel deprived in the least . It is wonderful to have large , long - range goals . But in order to reach them , you must have small , attainable , measurable goals . I 'm all about baby steps . Seeing progress and being happy with it . Progress . Baby steps towards that big goal . Moments to celebrate and be happy with what you 've done and learned . Helloooooo wood grain ! Nice to finally meet you ! Not done , but after going through 6 steel wool pads , one can of mineral spirits , a fourth of a can of stripper , a pair of industrial gloves , and several hours of work , we are seeing what our door may look like in the end . The other four doors , two windows , and baseboards will get done . But for now , I 'm happy . Progress . This is the result of a frustrated mama . Every game and puzzle we own is out on the floor of the game room . And the boy with the toes you see has been given the task of loading it all back into the closet . ( That ugly closet that I told you about yesterday ) Hubby and Giant were at the Pacers game , and the little kids were in bed . The other three kdis and I played a riotous game of Who - nu . Lots of laughing and good cheer . We packed up the game , and one of the kids put it away . I did not like the sounds coming from the general vicinity of the closet , but I was too tired to investigate . Red Star and Buttercup began playing Spongebob Monopoly in the fort they built in Buttercup 's room . When they got the game out of the closet , I heard an awful crash , an " Uh , oh " , and a request for help in cleaning up . Cuckoo offered to help , so I avoided the area . We had a nail - biting game of Sorry . Unfortunately , we didn 't have a full set of markers , so I was blue , with three blue markers and one red marker . Turken was green , with three green markers and one yellow marker . while I played Candy Land with Cuckoo . Unfortunately , we were missing half of the cards . While I was quite OK with the missing gingerbread card ( It irks me to no end when someone is just about to win when he pulls the gingerbread card . I usually stack the deck so it shows up early in the game . ) , I was not happy about the also - missing , game - accelerating ice cream card . Turken was out of luck . He had to play a game by himself . I love how he always plays for himself and an invisible opponent . The best part is when Turken does a victory cheer when he beats his invisible opponent . Poor invisible opponent . I don 't think he has ever won a single game . So now , finally , Giant has finished his project and is organizing the game closet . Good thing the kids got a lot of games in over the last two days , ' cause no one will be allowed near that closet for a long time . I don 't give up an organized space very easily . Despite the cold , this is a good time of year . Basketball is over . Soccer games haven 't started . Our weekends are ours to do with as we please . We usually please to get some home renovations done . I was hoping for a new kitchen , but that just won 't be in the budget this year . So , we 're on to the next thing on the list . We have done plenty of " skin deep " renovations in the past . We are pro painters and have taken down enough wallpaper to cover half of Indiana . We have also hung wallpaper . NOTE : Let me just say that a couple should never attempt to wallpaper a room unless they are very solid and confident in their marriage . Especially if the chosen room is the entryway with a 15 foot ceiling and uneven walls and you are trying to hang a paper with vertical stripes on it and one or both of you just happens to be a perfectionist . Separate vacations may be in order by the time that type of project is done . For this room project , we once again had to strip wallpaper off of the wall . Fortunately , it only went halfway up the wall . We had it done in 24 hours . Unfortunately , there was also a chair rail . And , as we should have expected , it was not simply nailed up . Every single thing we have done around here has come with surprises . When we got a new roof , we found that there were four layers of shingles that needed to come off . Plus , the little roof over the back porch was actually built AROUND an old roof , gutter and all . So , the chair rail was glued to the wall . He didn 't even have the decency to glue it to the wallpaper . Just slapped it onto the plaster wall . A lot of sanding is in our future . Two windows and five doors in this room . Not doorways . Doors . Not including the ugly closet seen earlier . We 've never stripped paint off of wood before . We have read about it . We have heard about what a pain it is . But we are crazy optimists who are sick and tired of looking at the ugly brown . And painting them just wouldn 't go with the rest of the house . So we 're stripping . After three hours , we have done two doors and the baseboard of one wall . Although , " done " is a strong word . Some of the paint has come off . In some places , a lot of it has . We will certainly be needing to reapply the paint stripper and give it another go . And I am happy to say that not one cuss word has popped out of our mouths . Yet . We have a long , long way to go , though . I 'm not ruling it out . That was mighty rude , wasn 't it ? I write a post about how awful I 'm feeling , then disappear with no explanation for a week and a half . So sorry . First , thank you to all who offered help and well wishes . The cold managed to settle into my face this week , so I am on antibiotics . Should be feeling my old self very soon . Wednesday last week I turned on my computer , and imagine my dismay when all I got was warning after warning telling me that my hard drive was inaccessible . According to my computer , it had 14 things wrong with it , and only five could be fixed . Not what I wanted to hear . All is well . We got the new computer up and running last night . It is a very different beast from my old laptop . This one is a desktop with wireless mouse , keyboard , and screen . I have a lot to learn . I turned it on , but I couldn 't type anything . After letting me flounder for a minute or so , she came over all haughty - like , picked up the keyboard , flipped it over , and moved the switch to " ON " . I knew that . Totally . It was exactly what I was about to do . I won 't go through every single thing that you missed this week . You don 't need to hear about the soccer practices the kids had or the awesome chicken and noodles I made . I won 't bore you with the details of my little Turken being famous and all when his face graced the front page of the Living section of the newspaper . But I will let you in on two fun days that we had this week . First , we got our first accumulating snow . Sure it was only an inch or so , but it was perfect to play in . The temperature was 30 degrees , so we didn 't freeze our hind ends off , and the snow was superbly pack - able . The little boys and I were outside for a couple of hours while the big kids were at school . It was the first time that Cuckoo ever played in snow . Last year , we had way too much for him to play in ( can 't really play in snow that is 13 inches deep when you are only 24 inches tall ! ) , so it was extra fun . It was supposed to be a snowman , but the head fell off and Turken picked out unusually large sticks for arms . Orangutan it is . And yes , it has two carrot eyes that were supposed to be one carrot nose . The biggest thing that happened last week makes me crazy happy . After three years , my brother and his kids finally moved back from Hawaii . They moved in with my mom in Kentucky for now , so last weekend we headed down to welcome them home . We hadn 't seen them since they came back for a visit two years ago , when my niece was two and my nephew was seven . Before they moved to Hawaii , my nephew would come to stay with us for up to two weeks each summer . He is such a sweet kid , and I loved having him . And he loved to come . Having no siblings , he was thrilled to have a house full of instant playmates . I cried when they moved soon after his little sister was born . On Sunday we pulled into my mom 's driveway , and I was the last one out of the van , as I was in charge of unbuckling Cuckoo . All of a sudden , I hear a little boy tearing around the van , screaming , " I 'm so excited , I 'm so excited ! " Then I was hit from behind by said boy , whose arms immediately clamped around me . Joy of joys . All day long , every hour or so , I was grabbed into a huge hug by that awesome little guy . And his sister was just as happy . Being that half of her life was spent away from us , I was worried about how she would react to a house full of relatives she didn 't know . Never should have worried . We had a ball . She and I played outside for a good long time . She grew up on the beach , so the winter coat / gloves thing was new . I got to show her the fine art of making and throwing snowballs in the little bit of snow that managed to survive in the shadows . Two years ago , I started having weird sensations near my left temple . With no warning , it would feel like a dam was opened in my head . It would last for a few seconds , then go away . It would happen once every few months , but then it started happening every week . Hubby got concerned and guilted me into going to the doctor . An MRI later , there was nothing to see . But , my routine blood work was flagged . My red blood cells , white blood cells , and platelets were low . I was told to get them checked again in a couple months . As the two months went along , Cuckoo was weaned , I was getting sleep , but the exhaustion was still there . And pain started creeping up . I first became alarmed when one day I was feeding Cuckoo a jar of baby food . By the end of that one jar , I could barely lift my arm it hurt so much . And it kept getting worse . My wrists hurt so bad that pushing a stroller was torture . By 9 : 30 in the morning , I was too worn out to climb one set of stairs . Joints were hurting , muscles were hurting . But I was so busy with the kids and all that comes with them , that I wasn 't able to figure out a pattern or triggers for any of it . The two months passed and I went back for the blood test and check - up . Numbers still low , and with all of the pain ( and swelling she felt in my wrists ) , I was sent to a rheumatologist . I think he diagnosed me before he even examined me . Although , I wasn 't the best patient . I wasn 't able to explain what I felt or when I felt it . He started poking different spots on my body , and asked if they hurt . Yes , yes , and yes . He then told me that I had fibromyalgia . I guess the one question he didn 't ask , and the answer I should have given was , " Those spots all hurt , but no more than here , here , here , and here . " A big indicator of fibro is pressure points . If a person has pain in 11 of certain 18 spots , fibro is a leading suspect . He put me on a low dose of gabapentin and sent me on my way . This particular drug is for people with seizures , but it took away the pain for many fibro sufferers . It also had a bit that helped me sleep , as the pain woke me up most nights , and I was getting very little sleep . I was happy with the diagnosis , as it meant I wasn 't going to die . My nerves were just over - sensitive . So even if I was in some pain , I could ignore it and move on . I wasn 't hurting myself by doing so . I went to college on a track scholarship and I gave birth six times , and the last three were without pain meds . I know how to work through / ignore pain . For several months , I felt much better . I , of course , attributed it to the medicine . There was pain , but not nearly as bad as it was . Then warmer weather came along , and the medicine wasn 't cutting it . I was in more and more pain . Another trip to the rheumatologist , another set of blood tests , and an increase in my meds . I took the higher dose for a few weeks , but had to stop . They made my brain completely fuzzy . I couldn 't focus on a thought for more than a few seconds . I was forgetting things , like names of people I have known for years . I went back to the lower dose . She and I spent a few minutes in the room together , and she came up with a diagnosis of perhaps early Lupus . That knocked me for a loop . I couldn 't even ask questions , I was so dumbfounded . Like I said , I am an awful patient . I was to start taking baby aspirin every day , so as not to die of a pulmonary embolism , and get my blood tested every month . My life became a series of doctor visits and needle sticks . By this time , the medicine wasn 't taking away any pain at all , so at my next appointment , he gave me a perscription for an anti - depressant . I never took it , I stopped taking the gabapentin , and I stopped going to see him . I have finally started to take control of the situation . I have figured out that sunshine is a trigger . That 's why the meds seemed to be working . It was winter when I was on them . I am now the crazy lady under an umbrella at all soccer games . I try to garden only in the early morning or late afternoon . When outside with the kids , I look for the shady spots . Anything repetitve or prolonged makes it hurt . Scrubbing , vaccuuming , holding a book to read , going up steps . I even had a hard time balancing the checkbook and paying bills last month . The writing about killed my arm . I make myself sit down during nap time ( thus the blog ) . If I don 't , I am useless by 6 : 00 . And a cold . When I get a cold , there is nothing that makes me feel better . My hips hurt when I sit , my calves hurt if I stand , my thighs and shoulders hurt when I lay down . The easiest things become a problem . Shoot , my wrists hurt right now from typing . Hubby helps by giving me massages , although he hates to do it . I used to love a deep tissue massage . They would hurt , but at the end I felt so much better . A massage now means he softly rubs my legs while I curse him out in my head . Sometimes tears streaming down my face . But I know , that when he 's done , my legs will feel better . And he knows that , too . So he does it . Through six months of blood tests , my numbers stayed low , but not dangerously low . I am done with the hematologist , and just need to go to my primary care doc once a year to get the blood checked . I 'm still not satisfied with the lack of a true diagnosis , but I 'm taking a break from doctors for a while . I am basically in the same place I was two years ago , except that I am taking aspirin . I 'll go to a different rheumatologist , and I 'll be armed with a better understanding of what is going on . Hopefully we 'll figure something out . Now , enough of my pity party . Being sick put this front and center in my mind . Normally it 's not . I have way too many other , better things to stay focused on . We love a good tradition around here , be they big or small . For example , every Friday is Milkshake Day . On the way home from school , we stop at Steak - n - Shake for milkshake hapy hour . It is our way to celebrate the end of another school week and get the weekend party started . Another tradition is our Super Bowl party . Since the Super Bowl doesn 't start until 6 : 30 , and our kids had an 8 : 00 bedtime when they were younger , we never went to parties . We created one at home , just us . We have a whole mess of appetizers , and it is the one day of the year when we eat dinner in front of the TV . In years past , I was in charge of cooking . Just because it is game - day appetizers , doesn 't mean we can 't put some healthy food into our bellies . I would make home - made chicken nuggets , quesadillas , sliced apples with caramel dip , spinach and artichoke dip , peanut butter celery sticks , cheese and crackers , and the like . I would throw in a bag of chips and some M & M 's as a treat . Each year , Hubby tried to get more and more junk into the menu . And this year , he was in charge . I was working at church while he took the kids to the store to buy the party food . I can 't say " ingredients " because all he bought was premade items . At 5 : 30 the chef got to work putting everything into the oven . The finishing touch for the tradition is cutting into the cake Hubby and the current scout made for the Cub Scout Cake Auction . ( We always get our cake back , even when the price is jacked up by other mischeivous bidders . ) Red Star and Hubby tweeked their design from last year 's cake , and made some adjustments . Much better ! Too bad the picture stinks . In the forefront is the trophy he won . Grand champion cake ! Every year we are asked if we are going to the school 's Super Bowl party . Every year , we say , " Not a chance . " We love this little tradition . Except next year , I 'll be cooking . Did you do anything fun for the big game ? " Not one rear end will touch a chair , couch , or bed until this house is clean . No complaints . No whines of hunger . No dilly - dallying . If you finish a job , come to me to get the next one . Good things will not come to those who need to be hunted down . " I then handed out the first round of chores . After Giant was done cleaning his room , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " As if . We are cleaning because the stars have aligned with our schedule , and we have a ( mostly ) full day at home for the first time in three months . After Phoenix finished scrubbing the TV room floor , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " Whatever . You are cleaning because you love me and want to make my dream of a clean house come true . In my heart , I am an obsessive neat - freak . I love clean . When Phoenix was a baby , I scrubbed the kitchen floor , on my hands and knees , every single day . With the birth of each child , the purchase of the farm , and the onset of my ailments , I have had to give up on some of my compulsiveness or go crazy . After my sixth child , my goal is to have a house that 's not gross . It 's not all up to me . Hubby is very good about doing the dishes every night . The kids have been doing chores since they were itty - bitty . All of the big kids know how to scrub , wash , and clean most things in the house . The little kids have jobs they can do , too . It is very important for kids to have chores , to learn how to take care of a house , to have some ownership in the running of the household . Throughout each day , the kids are expected to clean up after themselves ; make their beds , squeegie the shower door , clean up the games they play , etc . Oh , and the three oldest have to do their own laundry . But only because I got tired of finding clean clothes in the dirty laundry basket . Real cleaning either gets done by me during the weekdays , or by the kids when we are actually at home on the weekend . All very reasonable . Although , several mothers have told me that they use us as an example / threat for their own kids . When their kids moan about having to do chores , the mother comes back with , " Be glad you live with us and not on the farm with them ! Those kids do real chores ! " Not sure how I feel about that . I 'm leaning toward not liking it so much . As for yesterday 's massive clean , heck yes we were cleaning because we had friends coming over for dinner ! Do you think I would be wasting spending my one day off taking the stove apart if we DIDN ' T ? We don 't " entertain " like people on House Hunters always claim they do . ( " Oh , this would / would not be a great space for entertaining . " Who actually says that when they are buying a house ? ) The cleaning and cooking takes it all out of me . I expect our guests to entertain me . He has become a weatherman / timekeeper of sorts . He can predict the exact day and time that he will be getting tied up in order for me to let the chickens loose . So he hides . Luckily for me , he hides worse than a two year old . Yesterday I opened the van door and told the little boys to jump in while I let the chickens loose . That threw Roy the Wonder Dog way off . Usually , an open van door means I 'm getting in , too , and driving off . When I got out of the van , he panicked . Literally lost his mind and jumped into the van ! Once he got in there , he was trapped . No place to turn around , human in the doorway , and two little boys screaming their little heads off . I could almost hear Roy berating himself , " Well that was just brilliant . Great move . Go to the one place where you are sure to get caught . Stupid , stupid , stupid . " You may think , perfect , just grab him and pull him out . I say hold that thought . He is a 95 pound dog , trapped face first into the aisle of a van . He 's several feet off of the ground , and I have two little boys about to do some serious injury to themselves in their hysterical scramble to get away from the dog . Not that easy , but I am Super Farmer Mom . I whipped out the cape , used my super - human strength to wrestle him out , got the kids calmed , drug him to the back of the house , and got him all squared away . Finally I was able to open the coop . And I wasn 't even late to pick the big kids up at school . When we got home , we took advantage of the weather . When it is sunny and near 60 degrees on Feb . 2 , you do not waste your time on homework , laundry , cleaning , or cooking . that 's exactly what it was ! AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH ! ! ! ! ! I checked . Roy was tied up . It can only mean one thing . I looked to the woods on the other side of the field , covered Turken 's ears , and cussed out those blasted coyotes living there . I have never pretended to be the world 's best farmer . Not even the world 's most so - so farmer . We were very good at closing up the coop every night with the flock of chickens that came with the house . ( Yes , they all died from a variety of other things , but it was not because of the coop being open all night ! ) The second batch didn 't get locked up , because they never went into the coop . They much preferred sleeping in the tree outside . So we got lazy . We never closed the coop again . Until last year , when we had the worst case of coyote problem . I actually saw one jump out of the chicken coop in the middle of the day . We did start closing up the coop then . To no avail . Every one of our chickens was taken . Oh , and one of our pigs , too . But that 's a different story . So with this flock , we have been the perfect little chicken farmers . We secured the fence so nothing could get in the run . We tie Roy up , so he hasn 't had a single chicken dinner . We only let the chickens out for the afternoons , and we have closed up the coop every single night . Blast those stinkin ' coyotes . A man from church / school and his brother actually hunt coyote . I had no idea it was even a possible hobby until they heard of our problem last year . We had them come out over the winter , and though they found lots of tracks , the coyote didn 't respond to the call . ( Hunters can 't go into the field or woods , as it isn 't our property . ) Looks like they are going to have to pay another visit . I 'd call him today , except he 'll be at the hospital . Apparantly Coyote Hunter 's son swallowed a piece of his braces that broke off at school yesterday . He 's having to have a procedure ( don 't know the exact procedure , ' cause 13 year old boys don 't go for details ) done in order for the doctors to get the pieces out . Really . That never would have happened with the enormous metal contraption that passed for braces that I wore ! Anyway , he probably won 't have much time for coyotes today . I knew this day would come . I have been preparing us for it . It is the way it is supposed to be . You can 't grow and love and live your life unless you break away from me a bit . Things may get rocky for a while . You won 't like the rules . You won 't like the chores . You probably won 't like me sometimes . But in the end , it will all work out . I have loved you from your first heartbeat , and every single one since then . As your heart beats now , I love you . And yet , when the eye - rolling , muttering , defiance , or blame - shifting begins , I lose my mind . Why can 't I just hug her and say , " I love you " ? Why do I get stubborn right back at her ? Why do I have to prove my point ? Did I learn nothing from my own preteen / teen years ? Sometimes I can be calm . Sometimes I can let it go . Sometimes it takes awhile . Sometimes , when she says I never listen to her , she 's right . I really don 't want to listen to her . Surely one of these days , one of us will grow up . I also saw ( and heard ) lots of geese heading north . I love that sound . Not a fan of those Canada geese on the ground , but in the air they look and sound beautiful . The boys finished up their boccie ball and headed there to play . Kids love to explore this grand piece of history . While they played , I just walked around , remembered , and took photos . I love this door . Rule # 1 on the farm : Do not climb any of the ladders . They are sturdy , but the upper level is not . Unfortunately , this barn won 't last forever . It may not last 2 more years . When we bought the property , the barn had already shifted off of its foundation . If the barn could even be repaired , it would cost an absolute fortune . The only other idea we have is to tear it down , use as much wood as we can ourselves , and sell the rest . I hate the thought of tearing it down . So much history . So much beautiful handiwork . But , it has already shifted more this past summer . We certainly don 't want to wait for it to fall on its own . If you have any great ideas on what we can do with all of this gorgeous old wood , let me know ! Have a lovely day ! I am a woman who refuses to make solid plans in my life , but does whatever comes my way . As a result , I 've taught just about every grade , decorated cakes , owned a photography business , given birth to six children , and bought a 140 year old house that happened to come with a small farm . I am fortunate to have married a man who is responsible and sets goals so I don 't have to . You will often find me either driving our 12 - passenger van around town or disposing of the dead animals that frequently litter our property . |
One friend spoke up ( We 'll call her Swemp for today . It stands for " She Who Enjoys My Pain " ) and said that she does yoga every Monday and that I should join her . Perfect . So Monday night I head out to her yoga studio . I got there a bit early , so I went in to do the bit of paperwork . The instructor asked if I knew anything about Ashtanga yoga . Nope . I just know that I 'm supposed to do some type of yoga for my condition , and Swemp said this would be good for me . He got a funny look on his face , then began to explain it . Ashtanga is one of the more challenging types of yoga . It focuses on breathing and core strength . Those who are good at it complete approximately 35 different poses , each held for five breaths , with no rest between . Instead of resting you do " transition moves " . For beginners , that transition could be to simply sit with your legs crossed . He asked if I had ever done any type of breathing excercises . I have to say , the instructor was very good . He always gave variations on the positions we were doing , so if something was too difficult for the newer folks , we could cater it to our needs . He was very encouraging , constantly reminding us that we are looking for little bits of progress , not perfection from the get - go . My philosophy exactly ! Pose after pose I did the hardest position . If my body can do it , why shouldn 't I ? Look around . Lots of other people are doing it , too . I didn 't simply sit with my legs crossed for transitions . I was hopping in and out of downward dog each and every time . I was most excited when I did the big move near the end of class : By the end of class , I was feeling great . My muscles were a little tired , just as they were supposed to be . I immediately signed up for five more classes . While Swemp looked on with a smile on her face . As we walked to our cars , she mentioned that she is usually a bit sore on Tuesdays . A good sore . Nothing to worry about . I expected this . You 're always sore when you try a new athletic activity . Tuesday morning , I woke up feeling great . No soreness . No unusual pain . Around 9 : 00 I talked to my brother on the phone . During our conversation , my arm started to hurt . With each passing minute , my arm hurt more and more . After 20 minutes I had to get off the phone . My arm and shoulder were in terrific pain , all from holding a phone up to my ear . Not a good sign . As the day went on , both arms started hurting more and more . I was mixing pancake batter for dinner and thought my arm was going to fall off . My legs began to feel sore , as well . That lactic acid was building up fast ! By 8 : 00 last night , I was a hot mess . " A bit sore " my butt ! ( Actually , I think that is the ONLY thing that isn 't sore . ) And in case you didn 't know , Day 2 is always worse than Day 1 . Swemp is on my list . She needs to know that , as my friend , she needs to speak up . When I am very actively denying my 40 years , she needs to speak up and put a quick stop to it . Something like , " Hey , Hotshot . Go look at yourself in the mirror . You ain 't no spring chicken . " would have been immensely helpful . You know I 'll go . And because I am who I am , you know I 'll do exactly the same thing , thinking , " My body is used to it now . It won 't hurt nearly so much this time . " And we all know that it most certainly will hurt just as much . The time has come . We knew it was coming . All the signs were there . But it just wasn 't the right time . . . until now . Cuckoo Maran , my little man , you are sitting on the potty . Back in the old days , we had long , lazy days at home . Potty training wasn 't fun , but it was easier . We could stay home and get it done in a relatively short amount of time . Hubby wanted to go to Disney the moment Phoenix was born . He went most years of his childhood , and he couldn 't wait to start taking our kids . I , on the other hand , wanted to wait until the youngest was five . All four kids would be great ages to go . So we compromised . We agreed that we would book the trip when Giant was completely potty trained , with no fear of accidents . I am not kidding when I tell you that Giant went to his three year check - up in a diaper . The doctor noticed , and asked , " Why is Giant still in a diaper ? Your kids are always trained well before now . " With Turken , I came to all - out hate potty training . It wasn 't really his fault . It 's just next to impossible to learn to use the restroom when you are picking kids up from school and hauling them around to and from soccer . A bathroom isn 't always readily available . at all costs . We were driving home from school one day , and Turken tells me that he peed in his carseat . OK , I can handle that . And yet , there he sat , with his pants around his ankles , all a mess , with the biggest grin you 've ever seen plastered on his face . It 's one of those parenting moments when you have a choice . Go nuts because of the complete disaster you have just encountered , or return that big ol ' grin and tell the boy how proud you are that he followed directions . Thankfully I was in a laughing mood that day , so he got a big grin . Not once did he actually go while sitting on the toilet . Today , so far , one wet pair of pants down , but he did figure out how to actually make his body pee when he wanted it to . Score TWO M & Ms for that one ! On the way home from Chicago , I called home and spoke to Phoenix . Hubby was out with Buttercup and Cuckoo , so the boys were happy . ( When Phoenix is in charge , we let them watch TV . It assures us that nothing will get broken and no fights will break out in our absence . ) I jokingly told Phoenix that I would be home between 5 : 30 and 6 : 00 , so he better have dinner on the table for me . At 5 : 10 I got a phone call . Hubby was in a tizzy , frantically searching the freezer and pantry , looking for something to cook . See , Phoenix is a stereotypical male who cannot read or exhibit expressions or emotions . He heard " have dinner ready " , so Dad was told that dinner better be ready . Phoenix got this trait from his father , so husband didn 't question Phoenix . If he would have , he would have found out that in reality , I was completely kidding . So , after I calmed Hubby down , we agreed to meet at a restaurant . A flurry of stories was thrown at me in between kisses and hugs , and I soaked up every minute of it . It had been a busy weekend . So busy , that Cuckoo hadn 't gotten much sleep , and actually fell asleep before the food came , and didn 't wake up until we put him in the carseat . It 's fun to go away , but it 's so nice to come home . Hubby is such a good dad . Despite the fact that he can be overwhelmed with 3 and a half days alone with the kids , everyone was fed ( some healthy food even ! ) , happy , and uninjured . He even reminded them to do a few loads of laundry . Score ! Each book club trip , one friend has a question or two that is meant as a " get to know you and make you think " conversation starter . This year she asked , " Did you marry your father ? " It was a great question , and took us off into all sorts of areas . My answer to it was as follows : While my dad and Hubby are both smart men who are very good with finances and enjoy history , I didn 't marry my father . Where Dad is outgoing and impulsive , Hubby is an introvert and never makes a move without a detailed , thought - out plan . ( For example , my parents married after knowing each other for two weeks . Hubby and I dated for 7 years before we tied the knot . ) My parents divorced when I was about 8 years old , but my dad never lived more than 2 miles from us . He never missed a single weekend that he was to have us . He took us roller skating on Wednesday nights ( back when roller skating was all the rage ) He did fun things with us , like a day trip to Niagrara Falls . When we would go to the pool , he didn 't sit on the deck with the adults . He jumped in and played with us . We would go to the local park to roll down the huge hill and feed the ducks . Our childhood was certainly not a breeze , but even through the rocky times , I always knew that my dad loved me more than anything . So when it was time for me to head out on my own , I knew what it was like to feel loved . I knew that I shouldn 't settle for someone who merely said he loved me . I was to look for someone who showed it . Lived it . I knew . My dad made the choice to be there for his children . To let us know that he loved us . And when God led Hubby and me together , I was able to recognize it . I was able to see that the way Hubby treated me was love . A good , healthy , enduring kind of love that needed to be held on to . And now , that husband who loves me so , is showing our daughter what to look for . To find someone who loves her . She 'll know that love when God sends it her way . And finally , after almost four years of waiting , Turken was finally old enough to go . Sakes alive , it was the best day of his life . He is normally a shy kid , but he couldn 't hold it in yesterday . He had to tell everyone , " I 'm going to Daddy 's office , and a restaurant , and a Colt 's game . " After piano lessons , we headed downtown . He didn 't stop talking the entire way there . " I 'm going to help Daddy work . What do you do at Daddy 's office ? I 'm going to have macaroni and cheese . And ice cream . I 'm going to his office , and a restaurant , and a game . I 'm not going home . We 're going downtown so I can go with Daddy all by myself . " and on and on and on . The big kids thought it was cute . At first . By the time we got to Daddy , they were ready to see him go . I didn 't even get a wave good - bye . He was so focused on getting into that office . At 9 : 45 I finally got a text telling me that the game went into overtime , and they would be getting home late . The kid is three . We were way past late already . Finally , at 10 : 45 they rolled in . Turken did not sleep one wink the whole way home . He couldn 't stop talking . This is what he looked like when he walked in the door : At 10 : 45 he unloaded his bag to tell me the story of everything in it . How he spun a wheel to get the magnet . How he was tall enough to reach the bag , so he got to keep it . And of course , how the woman made his hat . Apparantly , he didn 't stop talking for the entire 6 hours he was with Hubby . At the office , he started out by examining Hubby 's desk . He needed to know what each and every thing was . When he came to the business cards , Hubby told him that they were cards with his name on them . Turken paused ( for the first time that day ) and then said , " But I don 't see a D on it ! " ( For Daddy . He doesn 't know Hubby 's real name . ) He woke up at 7 : 25 this morning , Pacers on the brain . We went through all of his goodies again , since Cuckoo hadn 't seen them yet . He told us about Boomer ( the mascot ) falling off the ceiling , but on a swing so he didn 't get hurt . And it was dark , because they turned the lights off . He didn 't know why . He told us about Boomer making slam dunks . He told us about the greeen team winning most of the game , but blue won the game in the end . And on and on and on . Even then , I don 't think I 'll be tired of hearing him tell of his evening . His cute little voice telling his version of the highlights of the whole experience just makes me smile . It is amazing how one little date with his dad can be the most exciting event he has ever experienced . This is why we do individual dates with our children . Now , for my own fun experience . Tomorrow I leave for the annual book club trip . This year we are keeping it closer to home and heading to Chicago . The itinerary , as far as I know , includes : It 's " as far as I kow " because I didn 't have to plan any of it . I love my friends . They don 't mind letting me tag along to all of the fun things they worked hard to find and plan . Hubby and I used to be terrible eaters . We were young , healthy , childless , broke , and clueless about how to feed ourselves . We would go to the Hostess thrift store and stock up on old white bread , Twinkies , Susy - Qs , and the like . We would drink Coke by the caseful , because it was forever on super sale prices . We had a bowl of candy - filled ice cream every night before bed . We ate a ton of canned soup and frozen salisbury steak . Today , we eat home - cooked meals every day . Salisbury steak is a bad word around here . We eat ice cream at birthdays , but rarely anytime else . I don 't know the last time I 've eaten a Twinkie . I only drink water and milk , except when we eat out . Then I get a Sprite . We only eat whole wheat . A huge bowl of Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream every single night before bed . At some point I realized that I was getting older , not the athletic hottie that I used to be . I decided to change the ice cream . I went to plain chocolate or vanilla ice cream with fruit on top . Bananas , strawberries , and raisins were my new candy . ( Yes , raisins . It makes Hubby gag to even contemplate , but I love them on ice cream . Don 't judge until you 've tried it ! ) One year for Lent I gave up all snacking after dinner . I lost 5 pounds in one week . Not good . ( For me , at that time , it wasn 't . ) So , I put snacking back on the menu , but left out the ice cream . Throughout Lent , I had grapes or a nectarine . After Lent I would have microwave popcorn or peanut M & Ms . Then I got this pre - Lupus thing . My activity level dropped off , and I realized I was having an after - dinner snack out of habit . I wasn 't even hungry . I stopped eating after dinner . I haven 't lost a pound , but I haven 't gained any , either . So , I went from eating a huge bowl of calorie - and fat - filled ice cream every night to not eating any snacks at all . Sure , it took many , many years . But here I am . And I don 't feel deprived in the least . It is wonderful to have large , long - range goals . But in order to reach them , you must have small , attainable , measurable goals . I 'm all about baby steps . Seeing progress and being happy with it . Progress . Baby steps towards that big goal . Moments to celebrate and be happy with what you 've done and learned . Helloooooo wood grain ! Nice to finally meet you ! Not done , but after going through 6 steel wool pads , one can of mineral spirits , a fourth of a can of stripper , a pair of industrial gloves , and several hours of work , we are seeing what our door may look like in the end . The other four doors , two windows , and baseboards will get done . But for now , I 'm happy . Progress . This is the result of a frustrated mama . Every game and puzzle we own is out on the floor of the game room . And the boy with the toes you see has been given the task of loading it all back into the closet . ( That ugly closet that I told you about yesterday ) Hubby and Giant were at the Pacers game , and the little kids were in bed . The other three kdis and I played a riotous game of Who - nu . Lots of laughing and good cheer . We packed up the game , and one of the kids put it away . I did not like the sounds coming from the general vicinity of the closet , but I was too tired to investigate . Red Star and Buttercup began playing Spongebob Monopoly in the fort they built in Buttercup 's room . When they got the game out of the closet , I heard an awful crash , an " Uh , oh " , and a request for help in cleaning up . Cuckoo offered to help , so I avoided the area . We had a nail - biting game of Sorry . Unfortunately , we didn 't have a full set of markers , so I was blue , with three blue markers and one red marker . Turken was green , with three green markers and one yellow marker . while I played Candy Land with Cuckoo . Unfortunately , we were missing half of the cards . While I was quite OK with the missing gingerbread card ( It irks me to no end when someone is just about to win when he pulls the gingerbread card . I usually stack the deck so it shows up early in the game . ) , I was not happy about the also - missing , game - accelerating ice cream card . Turken was out of luck . He had to play a game by himself . I love how he always plays for himself and an invisible opponent . The best part is when Turken does a victory cheer when he beats his invisible opponent . Poor invisible opponent . I don 't think he has ever won a single game . So now , finally , Giant has finished his project and is organizing the game closet . Good thing the kids got a lot of games in over the last two days , ' cause no one will be allowed near that closet for a long time . I don 't give up an organized space very easily . Despite the cold , this is a good time of year . Basketball is over . Soccer games haven 't started . Our weekends are ours to do with as we please . We usually please to get some home renovations done . I was hoping for a new kitchen , but that just won 't be in the budget this year . So , we 're on to the next thing on the list . We have done plenty of " skin deep " renovations in the past . We are pro painters and have taken down enough wallpaper to cover half of Indiana . We have also hung wallpaper . NOTE : Let me just say that a couple should never attempt to wallpaper a room unless they are very solid and confident in their marriage . Especially if the chosen room is the entryway with a 15 foot ceiling and uneven walls and you are trying to hang a paper with vertical stripes on it and one or both of you just happens to be a perfectionist . Separate vacations may be in order by the time that type of project is done . For this room project , we once again had to strip wallpaper off of the wall . Fortunately , it only went halfway up the wall . We had it done in 24 hours . Unfortunately , there was also a chair rail . And , as we should have expected , it was not simply nailed up . Every single thing we have done around here has come with surprises . When we got a new roof , we found that there were four layers of shingles that needed to come off . Plus , the little roof over the back porch was actually built AROUND an old roof , gutter and all . So , the chair rail was glued to the wall . He didn 't even have the decency to glue it to the wallpaper . Just slapped it onto the plaster wall . A lot of sanding is in our future . Two windows and five doors in this room . Not doorways . Doors . Not including the ugly closet seen earlier . We 've never stripped paint off of wood before . We have read about it . We have heard about what a pain it is . But we are crazy optimists who are sick and tired of looking at the ugly brown . And painting them just wouldn 't go with the rest of the house . So we 're stripping . After three hours , we have done two doors and the baseboard of one wall . Although , " done " is a strong word . Some of the paint has come off . In some places , a lot of it has . We will certainly be needing to reapply the paint stripper and give it another go . And I am happy to say that not one cuss word has popped out of our mouths . Yet . We have a long , long way to go , though . I 'm not ruling it out . That was mighty rude , wasn 't it ? I write a post about how awful I 'm feeling , then disappear with no explanation for a week and a half . So sorry . First , thank you to all who offered help and well wishes . The cold managed to settle into my face this week , so I am on antibiotics . Should be feeling my old self very soon . Wednesday last week I turned on my computer , and imagine my dismay when all I got was warning after warning telling me that my hard drive was inaccessible . According to my computer , it had 14 things wrong with it , and only five could be fixed . Not what I wanted to hear . All is well . We got the new computer up and running last night . It is a very different beast from my old laptop . This one is a desktop with wireless mouse , keyboard , and screen . I have a lot to learn . I turned it on , but I couldn 't type anything . After letting me flounder for a minute or so , she came over all haughty - like , picked up the keyboard , flipped it over , and moved the switch to " ON " . I knew that . Totally . It was exactly what I was about to do . I won 't go through every single thing that you missed this week . You don 't need to hear about the soccer practices the kids had or the awesome chicken and noodles I made . I won 't bore you with the details of my little Turken being famous and all when his face graced the front page of the Living section of the newspaper . But I will let you in on two fun days that we had this week . First , we got our first accumulating snow . Sure it was only an inch or so , but it was perfect to play in . The temperature was 30 degrees , so we didn 't freeze our hind ends off , and the snow was superbly pack - able . The little boys and I were outside for a couple of hours while the big kids were at school . It was the first time that Cuckoo ever played in snow . Last year , we had way too much for him to play in ( can 't really play in snow that is 13 inches deep when you are only 24 inches tall ! ) , so it was extra fun . It was supposed to be a snowman , but the head fell off and Turken picked out unusually large sticks for arms . Orangutan it is . And yes , it has two carrot eyes that were supposed to be one carrot nose . The biggest thing that happened last week makes me crazy happy . After three years , my brother and his kids finally moved back from Hawaii . They moved in with my mom in Kentucky for now , so last weekend we headed down to welcome them home . We hadn 't seen them since they came back for a visit two years ago , when my niece was two and my nephew was seven . Before they moved to Hawaii , my nephew would come to stay with us for up to two weeks each summer . He is such a sweet kid , and I loved having him . And he loved to come . Having no siblings , he was thrilled to have a house full of instant playmates . I cried when they moved soon after his little sister was born . On Sunday we pulled into my mom 's driveway , and I was the last one out of the van , as I was in charge of unbuckling Cuckoo . All of a sudden , I hear a little boy tearing around the van , screaming , " I 'm so excited , I 'm so excited ! " Then I was hit from behind by said boy , whose arms immediately clamped around me . Joy of joys . All day long , every hour or so , I was grabbed into a huge hug by that awesome little guy . And his sister was just as happy . Being that half of her life was spent away from us , I was worried about how she would react to a house full of relatives she didn 't know . Never should have worried . We had a ball . She and I played outside for a good long time . She grew up on the beach , so the winter coat / gloves thing was new . I got to show her the fine art of making and throwing snowballs in the little bit of snow that managed to survive in the shadows . Two years ago , I started having weird sensations near my left temple . With no warning , it would feel like a dam was opened in my head . It would last for a few seconds , then go away . It would happen once every few months , but then it started happening every week . Hubby got concerned and guilted me into going to the doctor . An MRI later , there was nothing to see . But , my routine blood work was flagged . My red blood cells , white blood cells , and platelets were low . I was told to get them checked again in a couple months . As the two months went along , Cuckoo was weaned , I was getting sleep , but the exhaustion was still there . And pain started creeping up . I first became alarmed when one day I was feeding Cuckoo a jar of baby food . By the end of that one jar , I could barely lift my arm it hurt so much . And it kept getting worse . My wrists hurt so bad that pushing a stroller was torture . By 9 : 30 in the morning , I was too worn out to climb one set of stairs . Joints were hurting , muscles were hurting . But I was so busy with the kids and all that comes with them , that I wasn 't able to figure out a pattern or triggers for any of it . The two months passed and I went back for the blood test and check - up . Numbers still low , and with all of the pain ( and swelling she felt in my wrists ) , I was sent to a rheumatologist . I think he diagnosed me before he even examined me . Although , I wasn 't the best patient . I wasn 't able to explain what I felt or when I felt it . He started poking different spots on my body , and asked if they hurt . Yes , yes , and yes . He then told me that I had fibromyalgia . I guess the one question he didn 't ask , and the answer I should have given was , " Those spots all hurt , but no more than here , here , here , and here . " A big indicator of fibro is pressure points . If a person has pain in 11 of certain 18 spots , fibro is a leading suspect . He put me on a low dose of gabapentin and sent me on my way . This particular drug is for people with seizures , but it took away the pain for many fibro sufferers . It also had a bit that helped me sleep , as the pain woke me up most nights , and I was getting very little sleep . I was happy with the diagnosis , as it meant I wasn 't going to die . My nerves were just over - sensitive . So even if I was in some pain , I could ignore it and move on . I wasn 't hurting myself by doing so . I went to college on a track scholarship and I gave birth six times , and the last three were without pain meds . I know how to work through / ignore pain . For several months , I felt much better . I , of course , attributed it to the medicine . There was pain , but not nearly as bad as it was . Then warmer weather came along , and the medicine wasn 't cutting it . I was in more and more pain . Another trip to the rheumatologist , another set of blood tests , and an increase in my meds . I took the higher dose for a few weeks , but had to stop . They made my brain completely fuzzy . I couldn 't focus on a thought for more than a few seconds . I was forgetting things , like names of people I have known for years . I went back to the lower dose . She and I spent a few minutes in the room together , and she came up with a diagnosis of perhaps early Lupus . That knocked me for a loop . I couldn 't even ask questions , I was so dumbfounded . Like I said , I am an awful patient . I was to start taking baby aspirin every day , so as not to die of a pulmonary embolism , and get my blood tested every month . My life became a series of doctor visits and needle sticks . By this time , the medicine wasn 't taking away any pain at all , so at my next appointment , he gave me a perscription for an anti - depressant . I never took it , I stopped taking the gabapentin , and I stopped going to see him . I have finally started to take control of the situation . I have figured out that sunshine is a trigger . That 's why the meds seemed to be working . It was winter when I was on them . I am now the crazy lady under an umbrella at all soccer games . I try to garden only in the early morning or late afternoon . When outside with the kids , I look for the shady spots . Anything repetitve or prolonged makes it hurt . Scrubbing , vaccuuming , holding a book to read , going up steps . I even had a hard time balancing the checkbook and paying bills last month . The writing about killed my arm . I make myself sit down during nap time ( thus the blog ) . If I don 't , I am useless by 6 : 00 . And a cold . When I get a cold , there is nothing that makes me feel better . My hips hurt when I sit , my calves hurt if I stand , my thighs and shoulders hurt when I lay down . The easiest things become a problem . Shoot , my wrists hurt right now from typing . Hubby helps by giving me massages , although he hates to do it . I used to love a deep tissue massage . They would hurt , but at the end I felt so much better . A massage now means he softly rubs my legs while I curse him out in my head . Sometimes tears streaming down my face . But I know , that when he 's done , my legs will feel better . And he knows that , too . So he does it . Through six months of blood tests , my numbers stayed low , but not dangerously low . I am done with the hematologist , and just need to go to my primary care doc once a year to get the blood checked . I 'm still not satisfied with the lack of a true diagnosis , but I 'm taking a break from doctors for a while . I am basically in the same place I was two years ago , except that I am taking aspirin . I 'll go to a different rheumatologist , and I 'll be armed with a better understanding of what is going on . Hopefully we 'll figure something out . Now , enough of my pity party . Being sick put this front and center in my mind . Normally it 's not . I have way too many other , better things to stay focused on . We love a good tradition around here , be they big or small . For example , every Friday is Milkshake Day . On the way home from school , we stop at Steak - n - Shake for milkshake hapy hour . It is our way to celebrate the end of another school week and get the weekend party started . Another tradition is our Super Bowl party . Since the Super Bowl doesn 't start until 6 : 30 , and our kids had an 8 : 00 bedtime when they were younger , we never went to parties . We created one at home , just us . We have a whole mess of appetizers , and it is the one day of the year when we eat dinner in front of the TV . In years past , I was in charge of cooking . Just because it is game - day appetizers , doesn 't mean we can 't put some healthy food into our bellies . I would make home - made chicken nuggets , quesadillas , sliced apples with caramel dip , spinach and artichoke dip , peanut butter celery sticks , cheese and crackers , and the like . I would throw in a bag of chips and some M & M 's as a treat . Each year , Hubby tried to get more and more junk into the menu . And this year , he was in charge . I was working at church while he took the kids to the store to buy the party food . I can 't say " ingredients " because all he bought was premade items . At 5 : 30 the chef got to work putting everything into the oven . The finishing touch for the tradition is cutting into the cake Hubby and the current scout made for the Cub Scout Cake Auction . ( We always get our cake back , even when the price is jacked up by other mischeivous bidders . ) Red Star and Hubby tweeked their design from last year 's cake , and made some adjustments . Much better ! Too bad the picture stinks . In the forefront is the trophy he won . Grand champion cake ! Every year we are asked if we are going to the school 's Super Bowl party . Every year , we say , " Not a chance . " We love this little tradition . Except next year , I 'll be cooking . Did you do anything fun for the big game ? " Not one rear end will touch a chair , couch , or bed until this house is clean . No complaints . No whines of hunger . No dilly - dallying . If you finish a job , come to me to get the next one . Good things will not come to those who need to be hunted down . " I then handed out the first round of chores . After Giant was done cleaning his room , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " As if . We are cleaning because the stars have aligned with our schedule , and we have a ( mostly ) full day at home for the first time in three months . After Phoenix finished scrubbing the TV room floor , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " Whatever . You are cleaning because you love me and want to make my dream of a clean house come true . In my heart , I am an obsessive neat - freak . I love clean . When Phoenix was a baby , I scrubbed the kitchen floor , on my hands and knees , every single day . With the birth of each child , the purchase of the farm , and the onset of my ailments , I have had to give up on some of my compulsiveness or go crazy . After my sixth child , my goal is to have a house that 's not gross . It 's not all up to me . Hubby is very good about doing the dishes every night . The kids have been doing chores since they were itty - bitty . All of the big kids know how to scrub , wash , and clean most things in the house . The little kids have jobs they can do , too . It is very important for kids to have chores , to learn how to take care of a house , to have some ownership in the running of the household . Throughout each day , the kids are expected to clean up after themselves ; make their beds , squeegie the shower door , clean up the games they play , etc . Oh , and the three oldest have to do their own laundry . But only because I got tired of finding clean clothes in the dirty laundry basket . Real cleaning either gets done by me during the weekdays , or by the kids when we are actually at home on the weekend . All very reasonable . Although , several mothers have told me that they use us as an example / threat for their own kids . When their kids moan about having to do chores , the mother comes back with , " Be glad you live with us and not on the farm with them ! Those kids do real chores ! " Not sure how I feel about that . I 'm leaning toward not liking it so much . As for yesterday 's massive clean , heck yes we were cleaning because we had friends coming over for dinner ! Do you think I would be wasting spending my one day off taking the stove apart if we DIDN ' T ? We don 't " entertain " like people on House Hunters always claim they do . ( " Oh , this would / would not be a great space for entertaining . " Who actually says that when they are buying a house ? ) The cleaning and cooking takes it all out of me . I expect our guests to entertain me . He has become a weatherman / timekeeper of sorts . He can predict the exact day and time that he will be getting tied up in order for me to let the chickens loose . So he hides . Luckily for me , he hides worse than a two year old . Yesterday I opened the van door and told the little boys to jump in while I let the chickens loose . That threw Roy the Wonder Dog way off . Usually , an open van door means I 'm getting in , too , and driving off . When I got out of the van , he panicked . Literally lost his mind and jumped into the van ! Once he got in there , he was trapped . No place to turn around , human in the doorway , and two little boys screaming their little heads off . I could almost hear Roy berating himself , " Well that was just brilliant . Great move . Go to the one place where you are sure to get caught . Stupid , stupid , stupid . " You may think , perfect , just grab him and pull him out . I say hold that thought . He is a 95 pound dog , trapped face first into the aisle of a van . He 's several feet off of the ground , and I have two little boys about to do some serious injury to themselves in their hysterical scramble to get away from the dog . Not that easy , but I am Super Farmer Mom . I whipped out the cape , used my super - human strength to wrestle him out , got the kids calmed , drug him to the back of the house , and got him all squared away . Finally I was able to open the coop . And I wasn 't even late to pick the big kids up at school . When we got home , we took advantage of the weather . When it is sunny and near 60 degrees on Feb . 2 , you do not waste your time on homework , laundry , cleaning , or cooking . that 's exactly what it was ! AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH ! ! ! ! ! I checked . Roy was tied up . It can only mean one thing . I looked to the woods on the other side of the field , covered Turken 's ears , and cussed out those blasted coyotes living there . I have never pretended to be the world 's best farmer . Not even the world 's most so - so farmer . We were very good at closing up the coop every night with the flock of chickens that came with the house . ( Yes , they all died from a variety of other things , but it was not because of the coop being open all night ! ) The second batch didn 't get locked up , because they never went into the coop . They much preferred sleeping in the tree outside . So we got lazy . We never closed the coop again . Until last year , when we had the worst case of coyote problem . I actually saw one jump out of the chicken coop in the middle of the day . We did start closing up the coop then . To no avail . Every one of our chickens was taken . Oh , and one of our pigs , too . But that 's a different story . So with this flock , we have been the perfect little chicken farmers . We secured the fence so nothing could get in the run . We tie Roy up , so he hasn 't had a single chicken dinner . We only let the chickens out for the afternoons , and we have closed up the coop every single night . Blast those stinkin ' coyotes . A man from church / school and his brother actually hunt coyote . I had no idea it was even a possible hobby until they heard of our problem last year . We had them come out over the winter , and though they found lots of tracks , the coyote didn 't respond to the call . ( Hunters can 't go into the field or woods , as it isn 't our property . ) Looks like they are going to have to pay another visit . I 'd call him today , except he 'll be at the hospital . Apparantly Coyote Hunter 's son swallowed a piece of his braces that broke off at school yesterday . He 's having to have a procedure ( don 't know the exact procedure , ' cause 13 year old boys don 't go for details ) done in order for the doctors to get the pieces out . Really . That never would have happened with the enormous metal contraption that passed for braces that I wore ! Anyway , he probably won 't have much time for coyotes today . I knew this day would come . I have been preparing us for it . It is the way it is supposed to be . You can 't grow and love and live your life unless you break away from me a bit . Things may get rocky for a while . You won 't like the rules . You won 't like the chores . You probably won 't like me sometimes . But in the end , it will all work out . I have loved you from your first heartbeat , and every single one since then . As your heart beats now , I love you . And yet , when the eye - rolling , muttering , defiance , or blame - shifting begins , I lose my mind . Why can 't I just hug her and say , " I love you " ? Why do I get stubborn right back at her ? Why do I have to prove my point ? Did I learn nothing from my own preteen / teen years ? Sometimes I can be calm . Sometimes I can let it go . Sometimes it takes awhile . Sometimes , when she says I never listen to her , she 's right . I really don 't want to listen to her . Surely one of these days , one of us will grow up . I also saw ( and heard ) lots of geese heading north . I love that sound . Not a fan of those Canada geese on the ground , but in the air they look and sound beautiful . The boys finished up their boccie ball and headed there to play . Kids love to explore this grand piece of history . While they played , I just walked around , remembered , and took photos . I love this door . Rule # 1 on the farm : Do not climb any of the ladders . They are sturdy , but the upper level is not . Unfortunately , this barn won 't last forever . It may not last 2 more years . When we bought the property , the barn had already shifted off of its foundation . If the barn could even be repaired , it would cost an absolute fortune . The only other idea we have is to tear it down , use as much wood as we can ourselves , and sell the rest . I hate the thought of tearing it down . So much history . So much beautiful handiwork . But , it has already shifted more this past summer . We certainly don 't want to wait for it to fall on its own . If you have any great ideas on what we can do with all of this gorgeous old wood , let me know ! Have a lovely day ! I am a woman who refuses to make solid plans in my life , but does whatever comes my way . As a result , I 've taught just about every grade , decorated cakes , owned a photography business , given birth to six children , and bought a 140 year old house that happened to come with a small farm . I am fortunate to have married a man who is responsible and sets goals so I don 't have to . You will often find me either driving our 12 - passenger van around town or disposing of the dead animals that frequently litter our property . |
One friend spoke up ( We 'll call her Swemp for today . It stands for " She Who Enjoys My Pain " ) and said that she does yoga every Monday and that I should join her . Perfect . So Monday night I head out to her yoga studio . I got there a bit early , so I went in to do the bit of paperwork . The instructor asked if I knew anything about Ashtanga yoga . Nope . I just know that I 'm supposed to do some type of yoga for my condition , and Swemp said this would be good for me . He got a funny look on his face , then began to explain it . Ashtanga is one of the more challenging types of yoga . It focuses on breathing and core strength . Those who are good at it complete approximately 35 different poses , each held for five breaths , with no rest between . Instead of resting you do " transition moves " . For beginners , that transition could be to simply sit with your legs crossed . He asked if I had ever done any type of breathing excercises . I have to say , the instructor was very good . He always gave variations on the positions we were doing , so if something was too difficult for the newer folks , we could cater it to our needs . He was very encouraging , constantly reminding us that we are looking for little bits of progress , not perfection from the get - go . My philosophy exactly ! Pose after pose I did the hardest position . If my body can do it , why shouldn 't I ? Look around . Lots of other people are doing it , too . I didn 't simply sit with my legs crossed for transitions . I was hopping in and out of downward dog each and every time . I was most excited when I did the big move near the end of class : By the end of class , I was feeling great . My muscles were a little tired , just as they were supposed to be . I immediately signed up for five more classes . While Swemp looked on with a smile on her face . As we walked to our cars , she mentioned that she is usually a bit sore on Tuesdays . A good sore . Nothing to worry about . I expected this . You 're always sore when you try a new athletic activity . Tuesday morning , I woke up feeling great . No soreness . No unusual pain . Around 9 : 00 I talked to my brother on the phone . During our conversation , my arm started to hurt . With each passing minute , my arm hurt more and more . After 20 minutes I had to get off the phone . My arm and shoulder were in terrific pain , all from holding a phone up to my ear . Not a good sign . As the day went on , both arms started hurting more and more . I was mixing pancake batter for dinner and thought my arm was going to fall off . My legs began to feel sore , as well . That lactic acid was building up fast ! By 8 : 00 last night , I was a hot mess . " A bit sore " my butt ! ( Actually , I think that is the ONLY thing that isn 't sore . ) And in case you didn 't know , Day 2 is always worse than Day 1 . Swemp is on my list . She needs to know that , as my friend , she needs to speak up . When I am very actively denying my 40 years , she needs to speak up and put a quick stop to it . Something like , " Hey , Hotshot . Go look at yourself in the mirror . You ain 't no spring chicken . " would have been immensely helpful . You know I 'll go . And because I am who I am , you know I 'll do exactly the same thing , thinking , " My body is used to it now . It won 't hurt nearly so much this time . " And we all know that it most certainly will hurt just as much . The time has come . We knew it was coming . All the signs were there . But it just wasn 't the right time . . . until now . Cuckoo Maran , my little man , you are sitting on the potty . Back in the old days , we had long , lazy days at home . Potty training wasn 't fun , but it was easier . We could stay home and get it done in a relatively short amount of time . Hubby wanted to go to Disney the moment Phoenix was born . He went most years of his childhood , and he couldn 't wait to start taking our kids . I , on the other hand , wanted to wait until the youngest was five . All four kids would be great ages to go . So we compromised . We agreed that we would book the trip when Giant was completely potty trained , with no fear of accidents . I am not kidding when I tell you that Giant went to his three year check - up in a diaper . The doctor noticed , and asked , " Why is Giant still in a diaper ? Your kids are always trained well before now . " With Turken , I came to all - out hate potty training . It wasn 't really his fault . It 's just next to impossible to learn to use the restroom when you are picking kids up from school and hauling them around to and from soccer . A bathroom isn 't always readily available . at all costs . We were driving home from school one day , and Turken tells me that he peed in his carseat . OK , I can handle that . And yet , there he sat , with his pants around his ankles , all a mess , with the biggest grin you 've ever seen plastered on his face . It 's one of those parenting moments when you have a choice . Go nuts because of the complete disaster you have just encountered , or return that big ol ' grin and tell the boy how proud you are that he followed directions . Thankfully I was in a laughing mood that day , so he got a big grin . Not once did he actually go while sitting on the toilet . Today , so far , one wet pair of pants down , but he did figure out how to actually make his body pee when he wanted it to . Score TWO M & Ms for that one ! On the way home from Chicago , I called home and spoke to Phoenix . Hubby was out with Buttercup and Cuckoo , so the boys were happy . ( When Phoenix is in charge , we let them watch TV . It assures us that nothing will get broken and no fights will break out in our absence . ) I jokingly told Phoenix that I would be home between 5 : 30 and 6 : 00 , so he better have dinner on the table for me . At 5 : 10 I got a phone call . Hubby was in a tizzy , frantically searching the freezer and pantry , looking for something to cook . See , Phoenix is a stereotypical male who cannot read or exhibit expressions or emotions . He heard " have dinner ready " , so Dad was told that dinner better be ready . Phoenix got this trait from his father , so husband didn 't question Phoenix . If he would have , he would have found out that in reality , I was completely kidding . So , after I calmed Hubby down , we agreed to meet at a restaurant . A flurry of stories was thrown at me in between kisses and hugs , and I soaked up every minute of it . It had been a busy weekend . So busy , that Cuckoo hadn 't gotten much sleep , and actually fell asleep before the food came , and didn 't wake up until we put him in the carseat . It 's fun to go away , but it 's so nice to come home . Hubby is such a good dad . Despite the fact that he can be overwhelmed with 3 and a half days alone with the kids , everyone was fed ( some healthy food even ! ) , happy , and uninjured . He even reminded them to do a few loads of laundry . Score ! Each book club trip , one friend has a question or two that is meant as a " get to know you and make you think " conversation starter . This year she asked , " Did you marry your father ? " It was a great question , and took us off into all sorts of areas . My answer to it was as follows : While my dad and Hubby are both smart men who are very good with finances and enjoy history , I didn 't marry my father . Where Dad is outgoing and impulsive , Hubby is an introvert and never makes a move without a detailed , thought - out plan . ( For example , my parents married after knowing each other for two weeks . Hubby and I dated for 7 years before we tied the knot . ) My parents divorced when I was about 8 years old , but my dad never lived more than 2 miles from us . He never missed a single weekend that he was to have us . He took us roller skating on Wednesday nights ( back when roller skating was all the rage ) He did fun things with us , like a day trip to Niagrara Falls . When we would go to the pool , he didn 't sit on the deck with the adults . He jumped in and played with us . We would go to the local park to roll down the huge hill and feed the ducks . Our childhood was certainly not a breeze , but even through the rocky times , I always knew that my dad loved me more than anything . So when it was time for me to head out on my own , I knew what it was like to feel loved . I knew that I shouldn 't settle for someone who merely said he loved me . I was to look for someone who showed it . Lived it . I knew . My dad made the choice to be there for his children . To let us know that he loved us . And when God led Hubby and me together , I was able to recognize it . I was able to see that the way Hubby treated me was love . A good , healthy , enduring kind of love that needed to be held on to . And now , that husband who loves me so , is showing our daughter what to look for . To find someone who loves her . She 'll know that love when God sends it her way . And finally , after almost four years of waiting , Turken was finally old enough to go . Sakes alive , it was the best day of his life . He is normally a shy kid , but he couldn 't hold it in yesterday . He had to tell everyone , " I 'm going to Daddy 's office , and a restaurant , and a Colt 's game . " After piano lessons , we headed downtown . He didn 't stop talking the entire way there . " I 'm going to help Daddy work . What do you do at Daddy 's office ? I 'm going to have macaroni and cheese . And ice cream . I 'm going to his office , and a restaurant , and a game . I 'm not going home . We 're going downtown so I can go with Daddy all by myself . " and on and on and on . The big kids thought it was cute . At first . By the time we got to Daddy , they were ready to see him go . I didn 't even get a wave good - bye . He was so focused on getting into that office . At 9 : 45 I finally got a text telling me that the game went into overtime , and they would be getting home late . The kid is three . We were way past late already . Finally , at 10 : 45 they rolled in . Turken did not sleep one wink the whole way home . He couldn 't stop talking . This is what he looked like when he walked in the door : At 10 : 45 he unloaded his bag to tell me the story of everything in it . How he spun a wheel to get the magnet . How he was tall enough to reach the bag , so he got to keep it . And of course , how the woman made his hat . Apparantly , he didn 't stop talking for the entire 6 hours he was with Hubby . At the office , he started out by examining Hubby 's desk . He needed to know what each and every thing was . When he came to the business cards , Hubby told him that they were cards with his name on them . Turken paused ( for the first time that day ) and then said , " But I don 't see a D on it ! " ( For Daddy . He doesn 't know Hubby 's real name . ) He woke up at 7 : 25 this morning , Pacers on the brain . We went through all of his goodies again , since Cuckoo hadn 't seen them yet . He told us about Boomer ( the mascot ) falling off the ceiling , but on a swing so he didn 't get hurt . And it was dark , because they turned the lights off . He didn 't know why . He told us about Boomer making slam dunks . He told us about the greeen team winning most of the game , but blue won the game in the end . And on and on and on . Even then , I don 't think I 'll be tired of hearing him tell of his evening . His cute little voice telling his version of the highlights of the whole experience just makes me smile . It is amazing how one little date with his dad can be the most exciting event he has ever experienced . This is why we do individual dates with our children . Now , for my own fun experience . Tomorrow I leave for the annual book club trip . This year we are keeping it closer to home and heading to Chicago . The itinerary , as far as I know , includes : It 's " as far as I kow " because I didn 't have to plan any of it . I love my friends . They don 't mind letting me tag along to all of the fun things they worked hard to find and plan . Hubby and I used to be terrible eaters . We were young , healthy , childless , broke , and clueless about how to feed ourselves . We would go to the Hostess thrift store and stock up on old white bread , Twinkies , Susy - Qs , and the like . We would drink Coke by the caseful , because it was forever on super sale prices . We had a bowl of candy - filled ice cream every night before bed . We ate a ton of canned soup and frozen salisbury steak . Today , we eat home - cooked meals every day . Salisbury steak is a bad word around here . We eat ice cream at birthdays , but rarely anytime else . I don 't know the last time I 've eaten a Twinkie . I only drink water and milk , except when we eat out . Then I get a Sprite . We only eat whole wheat . A huge bowl of Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream every single night before bed . At some point I realized that I was getting older , not the athletic hottie that I used to be . I decided to change the ice cream . I went to plain chocolate or vanilla ice cream with fruit on top . Bananas , strawberries , and raisins were my new candy . ( Yes , raisins . It makes Hubby gag to even contemplate , but I love them on ice cream . Don 't judge until you 've tried it ! ) One year for Lent I gave up all snacking after dinner . I lost 5 pounds in one week . Not good . ( For me , at that time , it wasn 't . ) So , I put snacking back on the menu , but left out the ice cream . Throughout Lent , I had grapes or a nectarine . After Lent I would have microwave popcorn or peanut M & Ms . Then I got this pre - Lupus thing . My activity level dropped off , and I realized I was having an after - dinner snack out of habit . I wasn 't even hungry . I stopped eating after dinner . I haven 't lost a pound , but I haven 't gained any , either . So , I went from eating a huge bowl of calorie - and fat - filled ice cream every night to not eating any snacks at all . Sure , it took many , many years . But here I am . And I don 't feel deprived in the least . It is wonderful to have large , long - range goals . But in order to reach them , you must have small , attainable , measurable goals . I 'm all about baby steps . Seeing progress and being happy with it . Progress . Baby steps towards that big goal . Moments to celebrate and be happy with what you 've done and learned . Helloooooo wood grain ! Nice to finally meet you ! Not done , but after going through 6 steel wool pads , one can of mineral spirits , a fourth of a can of stripper , a pair of industrial gloves , and several hours of work , we are seeing what our door may look like in the end . The other four doors , two windows , and baseboards will get done . But for now , I 'm happy . Progress . This is the result of a frustrated mama . Every game and puzzle we own is out on the floor of the game room . And the boy with the toes you see has been given the task of loading it all back into the closet . ( That ugly closet that I told you about yesterday ) Hubby and Giant were at the Pacers game , and the little kids were in bed . The other three kdis and I played a riotous game of Who - nu . Lots of laughing and good cheer . We packed up the game , and one of the kids put it away . I did not like the sounds coming from the general vicinity of the closet , but I was too tired to investigate . Red Star and Buttercup began playing Spongebob Monopoly in the fort they built in Buttercup 's room . When they got the game out of the closet , I heard an awful crash , an " Uh , oh " , and a request for help in cleaning up . Cuckoo offered to help , so I avoided the area . We had a nail - biting game of Sorry . Unfortunately , we didn 't have a full set of markers , so I was blue , with three blue markers and one red marker . Turken was green , with three green markers and one yellow marker . while I played Candy Land with Cuckoo . Unfortunately , we were missing half of the cards . While I was quite OK with the missing gingerbread card ( It irks me to no end when someone is just about to win when he pulls the gingerbread card . I usually stack the deck so it shows up early in the game . ) , I was not happy about the also - missing , game - accelerating ice cream card . Turken was out of luck . He had to play a game by himself . I love how he always plays for himself and an invisible opponent . The best part is when Turken does a victory cheer when he beats his invisible opponent . Poor invisible opponent . I don 't think he has ever won a single game . So now , finally , Giant has finished his project and is organizing the game closet . Good thing the kids got a lot of games in over the last two days , ' cause no one will be allowed near that closet for a long time . I don 't give up an organized space very easily . Despite the cold , this is a good time of year . Basketball is over . Soccer games haven 't started . Our weekends are ours to do with as we please . We usually please to get some home renovations done . I was hoping for a new kitchen , but that just won 't be in the budget this year . So , we 're on to the next thing on the list . We have done plenty of " skin deep " renovations in the past . We are pro painters and have taken down enough wallpaper to cover half of Indiana . We have also hung wallpaper . NOTE : Let me just say that a couple should never attempt to wallpaper a room unless they are very solid and confident in their marriage . Especially if the chosen room is the entryway with a 15 foot ceiling and uneven walls and you are trying to hang a paper with vertical stripes on it and one or both of you just happens to be a perfectionist . Separate vacations may be in order by the time that type of project is done . For this room project , we once again had to strip wallpaper off of the wall . Fortunately , it only went halfway up the wall . We had it done in 24 hours . Unfortunately , there was also a chair rail . And , as we should have expected , it was not simply nailed up . Every single thing we have done around here has come with surprises . When we got a new roof , we found that there were four layers of shingles that needed to come off . Plus , the little roof over the back porch was actually built AROUND an old roof , gutter and all . So , the chair rail was glued to the wall . He didn 't even have the decency to glue it to the wallpaper . Just slapped it onto the plaster wall . A lot of sanding is in our future . Two windows and five doors in this room . Not doorways . Doors . Not including the ugly closet seen earlier . We 've never stripped paint off of wood before . We have read about it . We have heard about what a pain it is . But we are crazy optimists who are sick and tired of looking at the ugly brown . And painting them just wouldn 't go with the rest of the house . So we 're stripping . After three hours , we have done two doors and the baseboard of one wall . Although , " done " is a strong word . Some of the paint has come off . In some places , a lot of it has . We will certainly be needing to reapply the paint stripper and give it another go . And I am happy to say that not one cuss word has popped out of our mouths . Yet . We have a long , long way to go , though . I 'm not ruling it out . That was mighty rude , wasn 't it ? I write a post about how awful I 'm feeling , then disappear with no explanation for a week and a half . So sorry . First , thank you to all who offered help and well wishes . The cold managed to settle into my face this week , so I am on antibiotics . Should be feeling my old self very soon . Wednesday last week I turned on my computer , and imagine my dismay when all I got was warning after warning telling me that my hard drive was inaccessible . According to my computer , it had 14 things wrong with it , and only five could be fixed . Not what I wanted to hear . All is well . We got the new computer up and running last night . It is a very different beast from my old laptop . This one is a desktop with wireless mouse , keyboard , and screen . I have a lot to learn . I turned it on , but I couldn 't type anything . After letting me flounder for a minute or so , she came over all haughty - like , picked up the keyboard , flipped it over , and moved the switch to " ON " . I knew that . Totally . It was exactly what I was about to do . I won 't go through every single thing that you missed this week . You don 't need to hear about the soccer practices the kids had or the awesome chicken and noodles I made . I won 't bore you with the details of my little Turken being famous and all when his face graced the front page of the Living section of the newspaper . But I will let you in on two fun days that we had this week . First , we got our first accumulating snow . Sure it was only an inch or so , but it was perfect to play in . The temperature was 30 degrees , so we didn 't freeze our hind ends off , and the snow was superbly pack - able . The little boys and I were outside for a couple of hours while the big kids were at school . It was the first time that Cuckoo ever played in snow . Last year , we had way too much for him to play in ( can 't really play in snow that is 13 inches deep when you are only 24 inches tall ! ) , so it was extra fun . It was supposed to be a snowman , but the head fell off and Turken picked out unusually large sticks for arms . Orangutan it is . And yes , it has two carrot eyes that were supposed to be one carrot nose . The biggest thing that happened last week makes me crazy happy . After three years , my brother and his kids finally moved back from Hawaii . They moved in with my mom in Kentucky for now , so last weekend we headed down to welcome them home . We hadn 't seen them since they came back for a visit two years ago , when my niece was two and my nephew was seven . Before they moved to Hawaii , my nephew would come to stay with us for up to two weeks each summer . He is such a sweet kid , and I loved having him . And he loved to come . Having no siblings , he was thrilled to have a house full of instant playmates . I cried when they moved soon after his little sister was born . On Sunday we pulled into my mom 's driveway , and I was the last one out of the van , as I was in charge of unbuckling Cuckoo . All of a sudden , I hear a little boy tearing around the van , screaming , " I 'm so excited , I 'm so excited ! " Then I was hit from behind by said boy , whose arms immediately clamped around me . Joy of joys . All day long , every hour or so , I was grabbed into a huge hug by that awesome little guy . And his sister was just as happy . Being that half of her life was spent away from us , I was worried about how she would react to a house full of relatives she didn 't know . Never should have worried . We had a ball . She and I played outside for a good long time . She grew up on the beach , so the winter coat / gloves thing was new . I got to show her the fine art of making and throwing snowballs in the little bit of snow that managed to survive in the shadows . Two years ago , I started having weird sensations near my left temple . With no warning , it would feel like a dam was opened in my head . It would last for a few seconds , then go away . It would happen once every few months , but then it started happening every week . Hubby got concerned and guilted me into going to the doctor . An MRI later , there was nothing to see . But , my routine blood work was flagged . My red blood cells , white blood cells , and platelets were low . I was told to get them checked again in a couple months . As the two months went along , Cuckoo was weaned , I was getting sleep , but the exhaustion was still there . And pain started creeping up . I first became alarmed when one day I was feeding Cuckoo a jar of baby food . By the end of that one jar , I could barely lift my arm it hurt so much . And it kept getting worse . My wrists hurt so bad that pushing a stroller was torture . By 9 : 30 in the morning , I was too worn out to climb one set of stairs . Joints were hurting , muscles were hurting . But I was so busy with the kids and all that comes with them , that I wasn 't able to figure out a pattern or triggers for any of it . The two months passed and I went back for the blood test and check - up . Numbers still low , and with all of the pain ( and swelling she felt in my wrists ) , I was sent to a rheumatologist . I think he diagnosed me before he even examined me . Although , I wasn 't the best patient . I wasn 't able to explain what I felt or when I felt it . He started poking different spots on my body , and asked if they hurt . Yes , yes , and yes . He then told me that I had fibromyalgia . I guess the one question he didn 't ask , and the answer I should have given was , " Those spots all hurt , but no more than here , here , here , and here . " A big indicator of fibro is pressure points . If a person has pain in 11 of certain 18 spots , fibro is a leading suspect . He put me on a low dose of gabapentin and sent me on my way . This particular drug is for people with seizures , but it took away the pain for many fibro sufferers . It also had a bit that helped me sleep , as the pain woke me up most nights , and I was getting very little sleep . I was happy with the diagnosis , as it meant I wasn 't going to die . My nerves were just over - sensitive . So even if I was in some pain , I could ignore it and move on . I wasn 't hurting myself by doing so . I went to college on a track scholarship and I gave birth six times , and the last three were without pain meds . I know how to work through / ignore pain . For several months , I felt much better . I , of course , attributed it to the medicine . There was pain , but not nearly as bad as it was . Then warmer weather came along , and the medicine wasn 't cutting it . I was in more and more pain . Another trip to the rheumatologist , another set of blood tests , and an increase in my meds . I took the higher dose for a few weeks , but had to stop . They made my brain completely fuzzy . I couldn 't focus on a thought for more than a few seconds . I was forgetting things , like names of people I have known for years . I went back to the lower dose . She and I spent a few minutes in the room together , and she came up with a diagnosis of perhaps early Lupus . That knocked me for a loop . I couldn 't even ask questions , I was so dumbfounded . Like I said , I am an awful patient . I was to start taking baby aspirin every day , so as not to die of a pulmonary embolism , and get my blood tested every month . My life became a series of doctor visits and needle sticks . By this time , the medicine wasn 't taking away any pain at all , so at my next appointment , he gave me a perscription for an anti - depressant . I never took it , I stopped taking the gabapentin , and I stopped going to see him . I have finally started to take control of the situation . I have figured out that sunshine is a trigger . That 's why the meds seemed to be working . It was winter when I was on them . I am now the crazy lady under an umbrella at all soccer games . I try to garden only in the early morning or late afternoon . When outside with the kids , I look for the shady spots . Anything repetitve or prolonged makes it hurt . Scrubbing , vaccuuming , holding a book to read , going up steps . I even had a hard time balancing the checkbook and paying bills last month . The writing about killed my arm . I make myself sit down during nap time ( thus the blog ) . If I don 't , I am useless by 6 : 00 . And a cold . When I get a cold , there is nothing that makes me feel better . My hips hurt when I sit , my calves hurt if I stand , my thighs and shoulders hurt when I lay down . The easiest things become a problem . Shoot , my wrists hurt right now from typing . Hubby helps by giving me massages , although he hates to do it . I used to love a deep tissue massage . They would hurt , but at the end I felt so much better . A massage now means he softly rubs my legs while I curse him out in my head . Sometimes tears streaming down my face . But I know , that when he 's done , my legs will feel better . And he knows that , too . So he does it . Through six months of blood tests , my numbers stayed low , but not dangerously low . I am done with the hematologist , and just need to go to my primary care doc once a year to get the blood checked . I 'm still not satisfied with the lack of a true diagnosis , but I 'm taking a break from doctors for a while . I am basically in the same place I was two years ago , except that I am taking aspirin . I 'll go to a different rheumatologist , and I 'll be armed with a better understanding of what is going on . Hopefully we 'll figure something out . Now , enough of my pity party . Being sick put this front and center in my mind . Normally it 's not . I have way too many other , better things to stay focused on . We love a good tradition around here , be they big or small . For example , every Friday is Milkshake Day . On the way home from school , we stop at Steak - n - Shake for milkshake hapy hour . It is our way to celebrate the end of another school week and get the weekend party started . Another tradition is our Super Bowl party . Since the Super Bowl doesn 't start until 6 : 30 , and our kids had an 8 : 00 bedtime when they were younger , we never went to parties . We created one at home , just us . We have a whole mess of appetizers , and it is the one day of the year when we eat dinner in front of the TV . In years past , I was in charge of cooking . Just because it is game - day appetizers , doesn 't mean we can 't put some healthy food into our bellies . I would make home - made chicken nuggets , quesadillas , sliced apples with caramel dip , spinach and artichoke dip , peanut butter celery sticks , cheese and crackers , and the like . I would throw in a bag of chips and some M & M 's as a treat . Each year , Hubby tried to get more and more junk into the menu . And this year , he was in charge . I was working at church while he took the kids to the store to buy the party food . I can 't say " ingredients " because all he bought was premade items . At 5 : 30 the chef got to work putting everything into the oven . The finishing touch for the tradition is cutting into the cake Hubby and the current scout made for the Cub Scout Cake Auction . ( We always get our cake back , even when the price is jacked up by other mischeivous bidders . ) Red Star and Hubby tweeked their design from last year 's cake , and made some adjustments . Much better ! Too bad the picture stinks . In the forefront is the trophy he won . Grand champion cake ! Every year we are asked if we are going to the school 's Super Bowl party . Every year , we say , " Not a chance . " We love this little tradition . Except next year , I 'll be cooking . Did you do anything fun for the big game ? " Not one rear end will touch a chair , couch , or bed until this house is clean . No complaints . No whines of hunger . No dilly - dallying . If you finish a job , come to me to get the next one . Good things will not come to those who need to be hunted down . " I then handed out the first round of chores . After Giant was done cleaning his room , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " As if . We are cleaning because the stars have aligned with our schedule , and we have a ( mostly ) full day at home for the first time in three months . After Phoenix finished scrubbing the TV room floor , he asked , " Are we cleaning because we have people coming over for dinner ? " Whatever . You are cleaning because you love me and want to make my dream of a clean house come true . In my heart , I am an obsessive neat - freak . I love clean . When Phoenix was a baby , I scrubbed the kitchen floor , on my hands and knees , every single day . With the birth of each child , the purchase of the farm , and the onset of my ailments , I have had to give up on some of my compulsiveness or go crazy . After my sixth child , my goal is to have a house that 's not gross . It 's not all up to me . Hubby is very good about doing the dishes every night . The kids have been doing chores since they were itty - bitty . All of the big kids know how to scrub , wash , and clean most things in the house . The little kids have jobs they can do , too . It is very important for kids to have chores , to learn how to take care of a house , to have some ownership in the running of the household . Throughout each day , the kids are expected to clean up after themselves ; make their beds , squeegie the shower door , clean up the games they play , etc . Oh , and the three oldest have to do their own laundry . But only because I got tired of finding clean clothes in the dirty laundry basket . Real cleaning either gets done by me during the weekdays , or by the kids when we are actually at home on the weekend . All very reasonable . Although , several mothers have told me that they use us as an example / threat for their own kids . When their kids moan about having to do chores , the mother comes back with , " Be glad you live with us and not on the farm with them ! Those kids do real chores ! " Not sure how I feel about that . I 'm leaning toward not liking it so much . As for yesterday 's massive clean , heck yes we were cleaning because we had friends coming over for dinner ! Do you think I would be wasting spending my one day off taking the stove apart if we DIDN ' T ? We don 't " entertain " like people on House Hunters always claim they do . ( " Oh , this would / would not be a great space for entertaining . " Who actually says that when they are buying a house ? ) The cleaning and cooking takes it all out of me . I expect our guests to entertain me . He has become a weatherman / timekeeper of sorts . He can predict the exact day and time that he will be getting tied up in order for me to let the chickens loose . So he hides . Luckily for me , he hides worse than a two year old . Yesterday I opened the van door and told the little boys to jump in while I let the chickens loose . That threw Roy the Wonder Dog way off . Usually , an open van door means I 'm getting in , too , and driving off . When I got out of the van , he panicked . Literally lost his mind and jumped into the van ! Once he got in there , he was trapped . No place to turn around , human in the doorway , and two little boys screaming their little heads off . I could almost hear Roy berating himself , " Well that was just brilliant . Great move . Go to the one place where you are sure to get caught . Stupid , stupid , stupid . " You may think , perfect , just grab him and pull him out . I say hold that thought . He is a 95 pound dog , trapped face first into the aisle of a van . He 's several feet off of the ground , and I have two little boys about to do some serious injury to themselves in their hysterical scramble to get away from the dog . Not that easy , but I am Super Farmer Mom . I whipped out the cape , used my super - human strength to wrestle him out , got the kids calmed , drug him to the back of the house , and got him all squared away . Finally I was able to open the coop . And I wasn 't even late to pick the big kids up at school . When we got home , we took advantage of the weather . When it is sunny and near 60 degrees on Feb . 2 , you do not waste your time on homework , laundry , cleaning , or cooking . that 's exactly what it was ! AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH ! ! ! ! ! I checked . Roy was tied up . It can only mean one thing . I looked to the woods on the other side of the field , covered Turken 's ears , and cussed out those blasted coyotes living there . I have never pretended to be the world 's best farmer . Not even the world 's most so - so farmer . We were very good at closing up the coop every night with the flock of chickens that came with the house . ( Yes , they all died from a variety of other things , but it was not because of the coop being open all night ! ) The second batch didn 't get locked up , because they never went into the coop . They much preferred sleeping in the tree outside . So we got lazy . We never closed the coop again . Until last year , when we had the worst case of coyote problem . I actually saw one jump out of the chicken coop in the middle of the day . We did start closing up the coop then . To no avail . Every one of our chickens was taken . Oh , and one of our pigs , too . But that 's a different story . So with this flock , we have been the perfect little chicken farmers . We secured the fence so nothing could get in the run . We tie Roy up , so he hasn 't had a single chicken dinner . We only let the chickens out for the afternoons , and we have closed up the coop every single night . Blast those stinkin ' coyotes . A man from church / school and his brother actually hunt coyote . I had no idea it was even a possible hobby until they heard of our problem last year . We had them come out over the winter , and though they found lots of tracks , the coyote didn 't respond to the call . ( Hunters can 't go into the field or woods , as it isn 't our property . ) Looks like they are going to have to pay another visit . I 'd call him today , except he 'll be at the hospital . Apparantly Coyote Hunter 's son swallowed a piece of his braces that broke off at school yesterday . He 's having to have a procedure ( don 't know the exact procedure , ' cause 13 year old boys don 't go for details ) done in order for the doctors to get the pieces out . Really . That never would have happened with the enormous metal contraption that passed for braces that I wore ! Anyway , he probably won 't have much time for coyotes today . I knew this day would come . I have been preparing us for it . It is the way it is supposed to be . You can 't grow and love and live your life unless you break away from me a bit . Things may get rocky for a while . You won 't like the rules . You won 't like the chores . You probably won 't like me sometimes . But in the end , it will all work out . I have loved you from your first heartbeat , and every single one since then . As your heart beats now , I love you . And yet , when the eye - rolling , muttering , defiance , or blame - shifting begins , I lose my mind . Why can 't I just hug her and say , " I love you " ? Why do I get stubborn right back at her ? Why do I have to prove my point ? Did I learn nothing from my own preteen / teen years ? Sometimes I can be calm . Sometimes I can let it go . Sometimes it takes awhile . Sometimes , when she says I never listen to her , she 's right . I really don 't want to listen to her . Surely one of these days , one of us will grow up . I also saw ( and heard ) lots of geese heading north . I love that sound . Not a fan of those Canada geese on the ground , but in the air they look and sound beautiful . The boys finished up their boccie ball and headed there to play . Kids love to explore this grand piece of history . While they played , I just walked around , remembered , and took photos . I love this door . Rule # 1 on the farm : Do not climb any of the ladders . They are sturdy , but the upper level is not . Unfortunately , this barn won 't last forever . It may not last 2 more years . When we bought the property , the barn had already shifted off of its foundation . If the barn could even be repaired , it would cost an absolute fortune . The only other idea we have is to tear it down , use as much wood as we can ourselves , and sell the rest . I hate the thought of tearing it down . So much history . So much beautiful handiwork . But , it has already shifted more this past summer . We certainly don 't want to wait for it to fall on its own . If you have any great ideas on what we can do with all of this gorgeous old wood , let me know ! Have a lovely day ! I am a woman who refuses to make solid plans in my life , but does whatever comes my way . As a result , I 've taught just about every grade , decorated cakes , owned a photography business , given birth to six children , and bought a 140 year old house that happened to come with a small farm . I am fortunate to have married a man who is responsible and sets goals so I don 't have to . You will often find me either driving our 12 - passenger van around town or disposing of the dead animals that frequently litter our property . |
So without thinking too long , he ran away from his master into the forest . He was very happy there . He grazed wherever he wanted to , didn 't have to work , nobody beat him - in all his born days he had never lived so well . But one day , while grazing , he looked up and saw the lion , frightening beyond description , coming straight toward him . " Hey , you , who might you be ? How dare you lie there when I 'm approaching ? Why aren 't you getting up to bow to me ? " " What kind of nonsense is this you 're talking ? " he asked . " You are king of all the beasts ? Who told you such a thing ? Do you have it in writing ? Who elected you to be king ? Well , speak up ! " " How astonishing ! " marvelled the Lion . " I have never even thought about such a thing . You 're probably right . But wait ! Let 's have a contest . We 'll go into the forest and the one who catches more animals within an hour is the true king . " But what was the Donkey doing in the meantime ? He strolled out onto a broad clearing , where the sun shone brightly , and on reaching the centre , threw himself down on the ground , stretched out his legs , closed his eyes and lolled his long tongue out of his mouth as far as it would go . Anyone looking at him would have sworn he was dead - very dead . Over the clearing there was a constant flow of flying birds - hawks , crows , kites , magpies , ravens - all the nastiest kind . Seeing the Donkey lying there dead they descended on him in a mob . At first they hopped about at a distance , and when they saw that he wasn 't moving , they began to light on him and peck at his tongue and his eyes . The Donkey lay quietly , only when one of the birds come too close did he clamp it between his teeth or knock it with his hoof , killing it and hiding it under his body so cunningly that the others didn 't even notice it . Before an hour had passed he had killed at least a score . Then he sprang to his feet , shook himself so vigorously and brayed so loudly that the birds scattered in all directions . He then gathered up all his killed birds and took them to the spot where he was to meet the Lion . The Lion was already there , waiting for him . " Now aren 't you the stupid one ! " answered the Donkey , kicking at the dead animals . " I could have caught at least two - score of such animals , but what are they worth ? Now just you look at mine ! I caught only those that fly in the air . You try to do it ! " " Ha ! " said the Donkey , haughtily . " You must always be respectful , because you may suddenly meet someone who is your superior , and then what ? I could now punish you immediately with death , but I 'll forgive you because you did this out of ignorance and not from ill - will . Go now , and be more careful another time ! " " Quiet , brother , " whispered the Lion . " The true king is not far from here . If he hears us , it will be bad for both you and me . " " There is , there is ! " the Lion whispered in terror . " I saw him myself . He is terrifying ! And what strength ! He can even catch the animals that fly in the air . I thank God that he let me go alive . " " Is that so ? " the Wolf was amazed . " Stranger and stranger ! I know this forest intimately and I can 't think of who this could be ? How does this king look ? " So they tied their tails together and off they went . They climbed up on a hilltop overlooking the clearing where the Donkey was grazing . The Lion stopped , looked , then whispered to the Wolf : The Wolf turned , took a look , and yelped : " You foolish Lion , why that 's just an old Ass ! " But to the Lion it sounded as if he said that they must get away fast and he became so frightened that he took to his heels ! Over stumps , over streams - he ran as fast as his breath would let him . Finally he was so tired that he stopped and looked behind him . Brother Wolf rambled around the forest , and while on his rambles one day , he ran into serious trouble . He was seen by a group of young hunters who , immediately on seeing him , gave chase . The Wolf ran and ran through the forest , then finally emerged on a beaten pathway . At that moment a man was walking along it , coming from the field carrying a sack and a flail . The Wolf approached him : " Dearest Uncle ! Take pity on me and hide me in your sack ! There 's a group of hunters out to get me , wanting to shorten my life . " The man saw that he was in a bad situation , so he suggested : " Well , if that 's the way it is , let 's go on ! We 'll go to court . If the court agrees to what you say , then it will be as you say : you can eat me . " " If you please , mother Mare , decide for us . I have just saved brother Wolf from a dangerous adventure , and now he wants to eat me . " And he told the Mare the whole story as it had happened . The Mare thought and thought , then said : " The Wolf is right , my good man ! I lived with my master twelve years ; served him faithfully and well , raised him ten colts , and now that I have grown old and am not able to work , he has turned me out into a barren field so the wolves could make a meal of me . It 's now a week that I 've spent here , days and nights , waiting for the wolves Saddened , the man began to plead with the Wolf that they seek another judgement . The Wolf agreed . They walked on and on till they came across an old Dog . The man turned to him with his problem . He told him the whole story just as it happened . The Dog thought and thought , then said finally : " No , my good man , the truth lies with the Wolf . Just listen to my story . I served my master twenty years , guarded his home and cattle , but when I got old and my voice gave way , he chased me out of his yard and now you see me wandering about without shelter . Past favours are forgotten , it 's the sacred truth ! " The man didn 't have to be told twice . He seized his flail and away he went at the sack ! The Vixen continued to encourage him : " Now show me how you turned the sheaves ? " The Vixen took the sack . She carried and bore its heavy weight till she got tired and sat down on a mound beyond the village to rest . While resting , she thought : " I 'll just take a look to see how many chickens he gave me . " She opened the sack and before she could even take a peep , the Dogs , Lysko and Riabko , jumped out and went after her . The Vixen ran with all her strength and barely - barely reached the forest and her burrow ahead of them . The Crane pecked and pecked at the porridge with her long beak , but was unable to get a bite . In the meantime the Vixen licked away at the porridge till she ate it all . When it was all gone , she said : The Vixen sniffed - it all smelled so good ! She stuck her nose into the crock , but it wouldn 't go in ! She tried using her paw , but with no success either . She circled the pot in one direction , then the other - there was no way she could get at the food . The Crane , in the meantime , didn 't waste a moment . She reached easily into the crock with her long beak , pulling out one piece after another and swallowing them with a fine appetite till everything was gone . The Vixen was so angry that she left without even thanking her hostess . She had thought , you see , that she would have eaten her fill for a week , and here she was , going home , having been neatly paid back by the Crane . From that time on , the Vixen gave up her friendship with the Crane . " Well , you are a fast - moving one , I must say ! A truly wretched creature ! Now tell me , poor Crab , is it true that once on an Easter Friday you were sent for yeast and it was a year later , on Easter Saturday , that you returned with the yeast , and after all that you ended up by spilling it all over the floor ? " " Faster or not , it is no reason for sarcasm on your part . If you want to know how fast I am , then let 's make a bet . I bet that I will reach that little stump over there before you will . " Having made their bets , the Vixen placed herself a jump ahead of the Crab , who lost no time in seizing her tail with his claws . Off they went , the Vixen running with all her might , so fast that she raised a cloud of dust . She reached the stump , panting , and shouted : So they walked along together . They walked and walked until , just before nightfall , they came upon a hole in the ground , wide and deep . The Boar jumped and missed , and after him came the others , all of them landing in the bottom of the pit . What to do ? They would have to spend the night there . They got very hungry after a while , but they couldn 't get out and there was nothing to eat in the pit . The Fox had an idea . They all threw themselves at the wretched Rabbit , tearing him to pieces and eating him . But really , the Rabbit was much too small to appease their hunger . It had barely dawned in the morning when they woke up so hungry that they could barely breathe . Again the Fox They began to sing . The Wolf tried his best to sing in a high yoice , but failed miserably . His howl was the lowest . The others threw themselves at him and tore him to pieces . Only two were left : the Boar and the Fox . They divided the Wolf between them . The Boar quickly ate his share , while the Fox ate only a little and hid the rest . A day passed , another , the Boar was getting hungrier and hungrier and there was nothing to eat . The fox just sat in his corner , pulling out one piece of the wolf meat at a time and eating it . " Ah , old crony , " sighed the Fox , " what can I do ! I 'm drinking my own blood out of hunger . Why don 't you do the same thing ? Take a bite out of your chest and suck the blood out slowly . You 'll see that you 'll feel much better . " The foolish Boar followed this advice . He dug his tusks into his chest , tore it open , but before he got to even tasting his own blood he was flooded with it and died then and there . Now the Fox threw himself on him and had something to eat for another few days . But soon even the Boar 's meat was gone . The Fox sat in the pit again tormented by hunger . The Blackbird was distressed , the Blackbird worried . How was she to get the Fox out of the pit ? She began by flying swiftly about the forest gathering up small sticks and twigs and throwing them down into the pit . She worked very hard and after some time the Fox was able to climb out of the pit over the pile of twigs . The Blackbird thought that now the Fox would go on his way , but no ! The Fox laid himself down beneath the Blackbird 's tree and said : Soon the Blackbird saw a woman coming along the path carrying lunch for the husband who was working in the field . The Blackbird jumped into a puddle , wet herself thoroughly , then into the sand , covering herself with it , then began running up and down the path , flitting back and forth as if she couldn 't fly . The woman saw that the bird was wet and helpless . She ran after the Blackbird for a while who also ran and flitted , but didn 't fly . At last she laid down her basket with its pots of food on t ] fe path and began to chase the blackbird in earnest . The Blackbird ran * a bit , then flitted a bit , but always further and further away from the path , the woman following . At last , seeing that she had taken the woman some distance away from her basket , the bird lifted herself into the air and flew away . The woman , annoyed , waved an arm and returned to her basket . But there she found a real feast . While she was running after the Blackbird , the Fox had jumped out of the rye and to the pots . He ate everything he could , spilled the rest , and ran away . " Shoo ! " shouted the man and swung his whip at the Blackbird . The Blackbird took flight and the whip hit the horse on the head . As if nothing had happened the Blackbird returned and this time sat on the other horse 's head and began to peck at it . Again the man swung his whip and again swatted the horse on the head . This made the man very angry . " What a jailbird it is I " he thought , " Why has it attached itself to us ? " " Just you wait , " thought the man , and suddenly pulling a gun out from under the seat , he shot at the barrel . He didn 't hit the Blackbird , but the barrel toppled over from the heavy blow and fell to the ground , spilling the water which ran in a heavy stream along the path . The Fox jumped out of the rye , drank his fill , and the man , cursing the Blackbird , picked up the empty barrel and drove home . They emerged out of the forest and onto the path along it . The Fox sat down in the rye and waited , when came the very same man who had earlier driven along with the water . He sat on the seat in front of the wagon and his small son sat behind him holding a stick . The Blackbird flew up , sat on the man 's shoulder , and began to peck at him . The man had barely understood what his son was saying when the lad gave a huge swing with his stick - and whacked his father across his back ! The Blackbird flicked away and a moment later settled on the man 's other shoulder . The boy swung again and gave his father an even harder whack across his back . The Blackbird flew about a bit , then suddenly lighted on the old man 's head and began to peck at his straw hat as if this was its rightful place . The boy swung his arm to try and catch the bird , but the Blackbird spurted away . She came down again and again and the boy tried his best to catch her - but in vain . " Just you wait , you fiendish bird , I 'll get you yet ! " thought the boy . And when the Blackbird lighted on his father 's head for the third time , without thinking a moment , he swung his stick across his father 's head with such strength that the world turned dark before the old man 's eyes . The Blackbird spurted up and flew away unharmed . The Fox , sitting in the rye , watched all this and held onto his sides with laughter at the Blackbird 's tricks . The Blackbird led the Fox along the forest road to the big pasture where a large flock of sheep were grazing . The shepherds were sitting in a hut nearby and the dogs ran about the flock , keeping watch . The " Very Well , " said the Blackbird . " Lie down hefe in the rye and watch me . When you start getting frightened , shout for me to stop . " The Blackbird flew off , then lighted down on the ground before the dogs and began to scratch the earth with her claws . The dogs sprang at her , but she flitted away and immediately came down again , but a little closer to the Fox . The Fox watched and waited to see what would happen , but didn 't notice that the dogs were coming closer and closer . At last the Blackbird rose from the ground and fluttering its wings as if wounded , began to fly straight toward the Fox , the dogs in full pursuit . Only now did the Fox realize the danger and jumping up , shouted to the Blackbird : The Hedgehog stood outside the door of his burrow , his hands stuffed under his belt , his nose turned toward the warm breeze , humming a quiet tune . Whether it was a tuneful tune was really nobody 's business - he hummed as only he knew how . So he hummed , until a thought came into his mind : The beets weren 't far from his burrow house . The Hedgehog helped himself to as many as he needed for his family , and that is why he thought of them as " my beets . " So thinking , he closed the door behind him and trudged along the pathway to the field . He hadn 't gone far when he saw the Rabbit coming toward him . He had also come out for a walk to take a look at " his " cabbages . Coming face to face with him , the Hedgehog offered a polite greeting . But the Rabbit was a very proud creature and thought himself quite superior to the Hedgehog . He didn 't reply to the greeting , just looked down his nose at him from his greater height and said : " People would think it a big joke if we told them . You with your crooked legs outrunning me ? " laughed the Rabbit . " As far as I am concerned , we can try , if you want to . Let 's race . " " See this long field . This is where we are going to have the race . We will start from the top of the field . The Rabbit will run along one furrow and I will run along the other . Now you stand right here , by this furrow , and when the Rabbit comes in sight , you step out and shout : " Well , are we ready to run ? " he asked . " Now , one . . . two . . . " He stood in one furrow and the Hedgehog in the next . The Rabbit shouted " three ! " and was off along his furrow like the wind . And without giving himself time to take a deep breath , he turned and rushed back along the furrow , his ears lying flat on his back . Mrs . Hedgehog remained quietly behind . When the Rabbit approached the other end of the field , Mr . Hedgehog stepped forward , shouting toward him as he approached : The Rabbit was furious . How could it have happened that the crooked - legged Hedgehog had beaten him in a race ? And without thinking , in his anger , he shouted : He turned once more to race back up to the head of the field and there again he heard these words repeated . So the poor fellow ran and ran , at least seventy - three times - back and forth , back and forth - and in every case the Hedgehog was " already there . " As soon as he arrived at one or the other end he heard " I 'm here already ! " On the seventy - fourth time around he was unable to finish . He collapsed in the very middle of his run and died from exhaustion . The Hedgehog gave his wife a shout and they both returned to their home in the burrow , where they live happily to this day if they haven 't passed away . " Of course , " said the Wolf , and they both bowed to the bird , right down to the ground . But the bird didn 't even look at them . He went on hopping from branch to branch , chirping away and continuously flirting his upright tail . " See , the Kingbird has flown up ! And there 's his Queen . It 's too awkward for us to look while they 're here ! " The Bear followed the Wolf into the bushes while the Kingbird and his wife flew into the hollow to feed their young . After they flew away , the Bear came up and looked in . The hollow was like any hollow in a decaying tree ; a few feathers were spread about and on them sat five baby Kingbirds . " You mean to say that this is the Kingbird 's palace ? " shouted the Bear . " Why this is nothing but a hole ! And these are supposed to be the Kingbird 's children ? Fie ! What ugly little strays ! " The Bear felt a cold shiver run through him at their squealing . He ran from the ugly hollow as fast as he could , took shelter in his burrow , sat down and sat there . The baby Kingbirds in their nest , once started , kept on squealing non - stop , till their mother and father returned . " You old Burmilo ! " he said , sitting on a branch over the Bear 's head . " What were you thinking of ? What was your reason for calling my children strays and added to that , spitting into my nest ? You 'll answer to me for this ! Tomorrow morning you 'll meet me in bloody battle ! " What could the Bear do ? If it was war , then it was war . He went out to call all the animals for support : the Wolf , the Wild Boar , the Fox , the Badger , the Deer , the Rabbit - all who ran about the forest on four legs . The Kingbird also called on all his feathered friends , not to speak of the small life of the forest : Flies , Bees , Hornets , Mosquitoes - and told them to prepare for a great war on the morrow . " Very well , " said the Fox . " You see , if it were animals that we had to deal with , it would be better to have the Bear himself for general , but we have to deal with all the winged creatures , so in this case I may be more helpful . The most important thing here is a quick eye and a cunning brain . Now listen - here is my plan . The enemy will be flying through the air . But we won 't bother with them . We 'll go straight to the Kingbird 's nest and kidnap his children . Once we have them in our hands , we 'll force the old Kingbird to end the war and surrender , then victory will be ours . " " I 'll go ahead and the rest of you follow , " said the Fox . " You see my tail - it will be our battle standard . Everyone watch my tail closely . When I 'm holding it straight up in the air , it means you can advance boldly . If I see ah ambush ahead , I 'll immediately lower it to half mast ; that will be a signal for . us to advance more slowly and carefully . And if there is real danger ahead I 'll bring my tail right down between my legs . Then you must run with all your might . " The next day at dawn , the animals gathered together to begin their march . The earth trembled , the brush crackled , the roars , the squeals that resounded through the forest were frightening . On the other side , the birds were getting together : the air was full of the noise of flapping wings , leaves fluttering down from the trees , shrieks , clamour , cawing . The animals came forward in a solid line straight toward the Kingbird 's nest ; like a thick cloud , the birds flew above , but couldn 't stop them . But the old Kingbird wasn 't too worried . Seeing the Fox marching proudly at the head of his army , his tail , like a candle , in the air , he called to the Hornet and said : " Listen , friend ! You see that Fox over there ? He 's the enemy general . Fly as fast as you can , sit on his stomach , and hite " with a \\ your might . " The Hornet flew straight to the Fox 's stomach . The Fox felt that something was crawling over his stomach and he could have chased away whatever it was with a wave of his tail , but no , his tail at this moment was the battle standard , so he couldn 't . But here the Hornet sank his stinger into a very tender spot ! But here the Hornet again stung the Fox with all his might . The Fox howled with pain , leaped into the air , put his tail between his legs and ran . Now the animals asked no questions about what was happening , but fled in terror in whatever direction was handy , falling all over each other in their haste . And the Birds , the Bees , the Mosquitoes and the Hornets took after them , beating them from above - pecking , biting , tearing . It was a terrible battle ! The animals - those who remained alive - scattered and hid in hollows and holes , while the Kingbird with his birds and insects were victorious . " Well , Burmilo , so you would fight with the Kingbird , eh ? " But the Bear , who had marched in the rear of his army and had been severely battered by the hooves and horns of the Wild Boar and the Deer when they fled in retreat , was now lying down and groaning . " Go away and give me peace , " he growled . " I 'll tell everyone not to provoke you in the future . " Once upon a time a Donkey was grazing in a meadow and slowly neared the forest as he grazed . Here , the Wolf , who was hiding behind a stump , jumped out from behind his hiding place , preparing to tear the Donkey apart . But the Donkey , though he was considered a fool , immediately thought of what he must do to save himself . As the Wolf ran toward him he smiled radiantly , bowed low to him , and said : " The election is not the problem , " explained the Donkey . " The problem is that there is no one to choose from . All the men have quarrelled between themselves and now say : ' Only the Wolf from the forest could possibly be the reeve now ' . After saying this they all agreed that I should go out to find you and bring you back to the village immediately . That 's how it is . " On hearing this the Wolf raised his tail high with joy . He climbed up on the Donkey 's back right away and rode toward the village . When they came into the village , the Donkey brayed loudly in a ringing voice , bringing people running out of their homes . On seeing the Wolf riding the Donkey 's back , they rushed at him with sticks , clubs and flails and beat him mercilessly . They beat him and beat him till the Wolf ran out of the village barely alive . Rushing away , the wretched fellow kept looking back to see if the people were chasing him . It was only after the village was out of sight that the Wolf , seeing a stack of hay , jumped up on it , stretched , and lay down to rest . Resting , he began loudly to speak to himself : Once upon a time a Bear lived in the forest and he was so strong and fierce that God forbid ! He would go about the forest strangling and tearing everything he met ; one thing he would eat , and ten he would leave behind , taking life in vain . The forest was large , with many animals , but all lived in fear . For it was quite certain that within a year there wouldn 't be a living soul left in the forest if Burmylo would continue to keep house in this way . After several meetings the animals decided on a plan . They sent a delegation to the Bear , which was empowered to say the following : " Honourable Lord of the forest , Sir Bear ! Why are you so abusive ? You eat one and kill ten more out of anger and leave them . Within a year , if you keep this up , there won 't be a living soul left in the forest . Better if you would do as we suggest - sit quietly in your burrow and every day we will send someone from among ourselves for you to eat . One day this lot fell to the Rabbit . The poor Rabbit was overcome with fright , but what could he do ? Others had gone before him , so he had to go too . He didn 't protest , he only begged an hour 's grace to say farewell to his wife and children . But by the time he found his wife , by the time he got his entire family together , by the time the farewells were said , the tears shed and the embraces ended , the sun had long gone past the dinner hour . At last the Rabbit tore himself away to begin his last journey . He started out , poor fellow , . toward the Bear 's burrow . But don 't think that he went hippity - hopping as Rabbits do , that he ran to beat the wind ! Oh no ! It was no time for the Rabbit to be hopping . He barely put one foot before the other , pausing every now and then to wipe the flood of tears from his face , to heave a deep sigh , so deep that it echoed through the forest . As he was thus proceeding , he suddenly came upon a stone well in the middle of the forest . It was curbed around with logs and down below its waters were very deep . The Rabbit stopped at the mouth of the well and looked down , his tears going drop - drop into the water . But seeing his image reflected in the water , he began to look at it closely , then suddenly cheered up and jumped for joy . His head was suddenly filled with a brilliant thought - how he could save himself from death and deliver all the animals from this fierce and unreasonable Bear . Crying and sighing no longer , but running with all his might and main , the Rabbit sped toward the Bear 's burrow . It was close to nightfall . The Bear had sat all day waiting for the time when the animals would send him someone for his dinner . He waited and waited and nothing happened . Hunger began to torment him , and along with this his heart began to beat with anger . " What does this mean ! " he roared . " What can they be thinking of ? Have they forgotten about me or do they think that one crow is supposed to last me two days ? Oh , those confounded animals ! If I don 't get something to eat in the next minute I swear by the elm and the beech that tomorrow , as soon as it dawns , I 'll go into the forest and strangle every living thing in it , not a single tail will be left ! " But minute passed minute , hour passed hour , and food didn 't come . By evening the Bear didn 't know what to do with himself from hunger and anger . It was in this state of mind that the Rabbit found him when he arrived . " Ha , you delusion , you wretch , you pesky goose ! " shouted the Bear . " What do you mean by coming so late ! And I had to wait , you mosquito , in hunger all day for you ? " " Honourable Lord ! It was not my fault that I have come so late . And you can 't blame the animals . Today , on your birthday , they got together at dawn and chose four of us for you , and we all set out immediately , like the wind , so that you , Your Honour , would have a ball today . " ' Ho , ho ! ' he shouted , ' nothing will come of this ! This is my forest and I won 't allow that your meat should feed some intruder who has no right to be here . You 're mine and I 'm going to have you for my own dinner . ' " And he took all four of us to his castle . I was barely able to convince him that he should at least let me go to you , so that I could tell you what happened . Now , Honourable Lord , just think for yourself , are we really to blame that you have been fainting with hunger today ? What do you intend to do next ? " " Who is this good - for - nothing who dares to intrude here ? " he roared , raking up the earth around him with his claws . " Rabbit ! Lead me to him immediately . I 'll tear him into little pieces ! " " Ha , what is a castle to me ! Lead me to him . I 'll get him even if he hides on the top of the tallest fir ! " With these words the Bear jumped down into the well with a great splash and there drowned . The Rabbit stood beside the well and watched until this enemy of the forest animals was completely drowned , then he sped like the wind to his friends and told them how he had fooled the Bear and released them from their misfortune . There is no need to tell you what joy reigned in the forest and how the animals thanked the Rabbit for his great deed . |
This morning I had plans to go on a trail ride with a couple of boarders who ride regularly once or twice a week during the nicer weather . Unfortunately , when I got there I discovered Panama was in a tizzy - someone was driving a tractor around on the road , right by the far end of Panama 's corral , and apparently it had him all revved up . He was on high alert in the cross ties , pawing and pooping , I guess because he could still hear the tractor and it made him nervous . He even tried a couple of little half - rears , like he was going to try to break out of the cross ties , but I pitched my gloves at him and that ended that . I decided to ride him in the outdoor arena a little while everyone else was still getting ready . My goal was to walk him in circles and give him something to do to calm him down , but it didn 't work very well - at least not that I could tell at the time . In fact , he even bolted on me once when a truck came down the driveway - something that wouldn 't normally bother him , but today sent him into a frenzy . He cantered for 2 or 3 strides before I was able to pull him up , and we went back to circling . As the other riders got ready , they started to congregate in the field right behind the outdoor arena . Panama seemed to know we were going with them , or at least that he wanted to go with them , because he got upset every time it looked like they were going to ride away . I was having a hard time keeping him at a walk , and I think he tried a half - hearted buck once when I used a one - rein stop to keep him from running away again . I was pretty close to not going on the ride after all , but part of me didn 't want to give in . Plus , I was thinking he might be better on the trail , surrounded by other ( calm ) horses . So I opened the gate from horseback and rode out into the field to join the other boarders . I can remember thinking as we left that I was going to regret my decision , but in actuality I ended up being really glad I 'd stuck with it . Panama was tense for the first ten minutes or so , but he did calm down anposted by Katharine Swan @ 10 : 41 PM Today was gorgeous - sunny and windy , but I heard it hit 80 degrees in the afternoon . I don 't doubt it ! Despite the beautiful day , though , I was having a hard time motivating myself to go out to the barn . I really felt like staying in all day , blogging and working at a slower pace . ( When I spend a lot of time out at the barn , I generally have to hustle so that I can still get my work done with the time I 've got left , and it 's harder to find time to blog . ) I wasted so much time feeling guilty about staying home , though , that I finally headed out there around mid - afternoon . And of course , I ended up being really glad I did . It was beautiful , if a little too windy for my tastes . I saddled Panama up and we went to the outdoor arena to ride . Within a few minutes , Panama 's third best girl and her owner had joined us , and we rode for a while at a walk , side by side , chatting away . I did get some trotting in when Flash took a break to pee , but kept getting stage fright , so her owner had to dismount and wait for her to relax enough to go . Panama and I trotted in circles at the other end in the meantime , but otherwise the theme of the ride was taking it easy . We also went out and made a loop around the field . This involved riding past the junk pile that scared Panama into a spin and bolt a while back . Panama was even on the left side , which meant that he had a clear view of the concrete sewage tunnel that freaked him out so much before , and he still walked past it just fine . His head was up and his ears were perked , and he was looking around at everything , but he never once spooked or even tensed . Meanwhile , Flash was balking and spooking in place right beside us , and he still kept his cool . I was so proud of him ! On our way back , I spotted one of the boarders that does a lot of trail rides , turning her horse out to roll in the outdoor arena . I called out to her , and she invited me on their next trail ride . I 'm looking forward to it - it 'll be good to get out into the park again ! The warm weather should hold for another couposted by Katharine Swan @ 9 : 18 PM Sometimes you just have to lie down and take it ! It was a lovely day out at the barn today . Pretty much everyone was napping . I groomed Panama , but by the time I got done shedding him out , currying his legs , and trimming the dried mud from his fetlocks , I didn 't much feel like a long ride . Therefore we only rode for about 15 minutes outside , but it was a nice relaxing ride ! Panama and Daisy seem to be doing well . Apparently she let him know who was boss yesterday afternoon at feed time , but I think that is to be expected . Otherwise , they are together quite a bit - perhaps more Panama 's choice than hers , as he sticks to her like glue , but ( as is evident from the pictures above ) she isn 't doing anything to discourage it . Watch out , Lady - you 've got competition ! Labels : horse behavior I know many of you don 't like Fugly , but this is one cause I think everyone agrees is a good one . Three years ago , a man named Tony Meyers commenced a violent attack upon a horse at a horse auction . The horse nearly died after he dragged her from his trailer with a barbed wire - wrapped halter , ran her over and shot her . She survived but it has taken almost three years for his case to come to trial and it 's going to be heard starting on Tuesday at the St . Martinsville Court . This is an excerpt from today 's Fugly post . I think we can all agree that Tony Meyers is the worst kind of horse owner and ought to be in jail , not free to buy more horses . Fugly is simply asking that we contact the local media and encourage them to run the story . The more publicity it gets , the more public interest , and the more likely he 'll get the maximum sentence . Please send the media your emails ( you can copy and paste from Cathy 's phone script ) , and repost the plea on your blog , facebook , etc . No one should be allowed to get away with treating a horse like this ! Labels : animal rights Well , it 's getting to be that time , and many of the mares at the barn are in heat right now . It means that there is a lot of ear - pinning and conversation going on , and it also means that Panama is even more interested than usual in all the girls . By Thursday morning , by hand was no longer sensitive to friction ( remember , I burned it with boiling water Tuesday morning ) , so I went out to the barn to ride . Unfortunately , everyone else had the same idea at the same time . Mozart , the new gelding in Panama 's corral , and Zans were both being ridden in the indoor at the same time as Panama and I , since the outdoor arena was still too mucky from our last snowstorm . Panama was doing pretty well with it , but that fell apart when Lady 's owner brought her in , too . Lady 's owner commented that she was uncharacteristically " up , " and although it didn 't occur to me at the time , I 'll bet she was in heat like all the rest of the mares at the barn . In any case , Panama was very distracted with Lady around , wanting to speed up when her rider cantered her by us , and was so interested in getting to where she was all the time that I could practically feel all of his energy leaning in her direction . Yesterday we also had a busy arena . Three young girls were having a group riding lesson , complete with a low crossrail set up toward one end of the arena . Add two other horses and riders , and two instructors ( one of them mine ) , and me and Panama , and you have quite the crowd ! In retrospect , I think at least two of the mares in that crowded arena were in heat , because there was a lot of ear - pinning and whinnying going on . Every time one of the mares would whinny , Panama 's head would shoot up and his ears would shoot forward . He did get used to it after a little bit , but in the beginning I could tell his mare radar was on overload . Riding in a crowded arena was good for us , both days . I found that maneuvering around other riders kept me looking up and kept me from getting too bored , as there was always something new to focus on . On Friday we even walkposted by Katharine Swan @ 12 : 52 AM We got hit with another snowstorm last night . Like many spring snows , it was really wet and heavy snow . It also fell pretty quickly - it started snowing around 5pm , and within a few hours looked like it had been snowing all day . The lawns , cars , trees , and roads were covered with soggy - looking snow , looking more like we had eight inches of waterlogged cotton balls . After that the snow slowed , and although it continued falling lightly all night , most of what we got fell yesterday evening . This morning it was still misting snow . There was a ton of snow on the ground , so Michael stayed home from work . Turned out the roads were just wet , though , and when the sun came out around midday , the already - wet snow started melting like crazy . I was glad for the snow day , though , even if it wasn 't entirely necessary . We got out to the barn this afternoon , and I took Panama 's blanket off of him for about an hour . It was still a touch chilly , and it will be cold tonight , though , so I put it back on before we left . The snow on the driveway was already melting , and everything out there was quite sloppy . I turned Panama out in the arena without his blanket , thinking he might want to roll , but the sloppy , wet snow was too gross for him . So instead I made snowballs , a couple of which he ate out of my hand like an apple , and a few of which I tossed onto his back to see what he 'd do . ( Nothing . ) Here 's what the barn looks like after a half - melted wet snow ( which will probably be almost all gone tomorrow ) : And Panama 's corral : Shortly after snapping that picture , I called to Panama , " Do you want a carrot ? " Both geldings ' heads immediately shot up . Ha - I guess mine isn 't the only horse who knows what that means . Panama and Mozart seem to be getting along pretty well . They appear to be on equal footing - neither is the boss , at least for now . They act more like brothers than anything else , and can eat right next to one another without any ear - pinning or other posturing . Well , except for this incident . CHOMPI don 't know what that little biteposted by Katharine Swan @ 6 : 45 PM Poor Panama . Just when he was recovering from the old gelding 's death , the old mare , Breezy , was moved . They were just starting to buddy up , too , and I was thinking that at least there was a bright spot in the loss of KZ . I guess she left yesterday . My trainer said that while she was teaching a lesson , she could hear Panama hollering the entire time . She didn 't realize what was wrong until she noticed the old mare was gone . We have another snowstorm coming in tonight , so I was out this afternoon to blanket Panama . ( I was originally supposed to have a lesson myself , but after I burned my hand this morning by accidentally pouring boiling water over it , I realized I wasn 't going to be able to hold the reins comfortably and canceled . ) It was raining when I arrived , so Panama and Mozart were hanging out in the shed , but I guess they 'd been running back and forth hollering all day - especially Panama . And when I took him out of the corral , Mozart stood out in the rain and whinnied for him repeatedly . Although my hand wasn 't hurting as much thanks to the ibuprofen I took , I still wasn 't going to ride , mainly because I 'd taken my saddle , saddle pad , girth , and bridle home to clean everything up - and forgotten to bring it all back . ( I do have a trail bridle and an extra set of reins , so I could have ridden bareback , but I 'm not risking that when he 's upset about losing a pasturemate and there 's a storm rolling in . ) Instead , I took advantage of the fact that he was damp to do another session with the blow dryer . This time I had my own blow dryer and an extension cord ( the former from FreeCycle - I love FreeCycle ! - and the latter something Michael picked up for me last time he went to the store ) . Panama found he couldn 't move out of the blow dryer 's reach , but as I expected , it wasn 't a big deal . He didn 't act as ticklish on his flanks and loins , this time - though he did just about blast off like a rocket when I unthinkingly blew it on his belly without any warning . Silly horse ! It was too warm still for a heavy blaposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 17 PM At a bookstore a couple of months ago , I spotted this book and spent the rest of our visit flipping through it . Although I love Cherry Hill 's books , I read about half of it during that visit and decided I didn 't think it was worth buying . After checking it out from the library , though , I 've changed my mind - there was actually a lot of useful stuff in the book , and it wasn 't geared toward beginners quite as much as I initially thought . I will probably end up buying it at some point , as it seems like a good one to have on my bookshelf . I really like many of Hill 's thoughts about horses . I have another book of hers , Cherry Hill 's Horsekeeping Almanac , which I 've been reading in bits and pieces for a while now , and I love it . Her ideas about horses seem to be practical and sound , and I like her balance between traditional and natural horsemanship . One of the things I noticed is that this book supports something I 've always said , that I think it 's just fine , and even helpful , to use voice commands with your horse . Some people who follow natural horsemanship claim that voice commands are unnecessary and confusing , but I personally find that they are useful and comfortable for both me and Panama . Here are a few things that Hill has to say about it : " Good horsemen can often be observed communicating with a horse in a type of low - level ' breaking patter , ' a term from bygone cowboy days . It describes a type of low - volume mumbling a cowboy might use around a horse that he is training . The soothing tones calm the horse . Hence the term horse whisperer . " ( page 30 ) " The reason clinicians do not advocate voice commands more often is because most of them are talking constantly to the audience , and it would be difficult for a horse to distinguish a voice command out of all that . Voice commands are not customary in most show ring settings but they can be a means to an end such as " Whoa " when a reiner asks his horse for a sliding stop . In most at - home training situations , voice commands are not only appropriate but also very effective . " ( page 124 ) Another thing I 've often said that Hill appears to agree with me on is that you need to maintain a position of alpha over your horses . By this I don 't mean an aggressive alpha , but I do mean a leader who must also be respected . Hill says : " Pecking order is most evident at feeding time . You can easily tell a human 's rank among horses by watching as she feeds them . If the horses come charging into the person 's space and she drops the feed and turns tail , one of the horses is definitely on top . " ( page 59 ) There is an awful lot of information in this book , far more than the quotes I remembered to mark so that I could blog about them later . The book covers everything from body language to bad habits to training , and is a great resource for both beginners and people who already own horses . A little something here for everyone ! Labels : horse book reviews This afternoon after Michael and I left the barn , he pointed out a couple of elk just off one of the exits . Despite the fact that I 've lived in Colorado almost all of my life , I 'd never seen one in person ( let alone practically in the suburbs ) , so I insisted that he circle back around and get off the highway so I could take some pictures . It turned out there were four of them , two grazing right next next to the road and two above them on the hill . The one with the antlers was watching all the people stopping in their cars to look , while his companion mooned us . The two grazing didn 't seem to care one bit that they were grazing within ten feet of the cars - just on the other side of the sidewalk . At first I thought it was a bull and three cows , but I was wondering about their lumpy looking foreheads so when I got home I looked it up . Turns out they were all males - apparently when they shed their horns ( which they do every year ) they form bachelor bands for protection . Seeing elk in person , they are not the majestic creatures you 'd think . They are actually surprisingly awkward - looking , the way they are put together . But it was cool nevertheless ! Labels : miscellaneous The other day I posted a picture of one of the cute calves that have been gamboling around the pasture out where I board my horse . They were all out today , enjoying the weather , playing and harassing their mothers . There are a bunch of all - black calves , but there is one with a cute white face and a black - speckled nose . Her name is Sally . See ? I 'm guessing Sally is more of a pet , since the others have numbers on their tags instead of names . Also Sally seems a little bit less afraid of people , like she 's being handled by someone . She didn 't come up to me , but she thought about it a whole lot harder than the others . The calves are ridiculously cute , especially the way they play - just like puppies . One was chasing its mother , bouncing around at her heels as she plodded along , clearly unconcerned . Another ran behind its mother and peered at me from behind her legs when I came closer to the fence . Wish I 'd gotten a picture of that ! Panama is really interested in the cows . Today I took him up to the fence and he sniffed noses with one before she snorted and backed away , but I think she was more scared of me than him . When I tried to lead Panama away , he didn 't want to go ! Sometimes I wonder if he 'd enjoy life as a cow pony . . . We had an exciting day today , so stay tuned for some more pictures ! Labels : miscellaneous It always amuses me when people make comments about how bad they think the weather in Colorado must be . My out - of - state bloggy friends often say things like how lucky I am to be able to ride in the winter in Colorado , and that sort of thing . You might know that we had a big snowstorm on Friday . Between late Thursday night and late Friday night , Denver got about 8 inches - possibly more in some areas - of snow . I suspect the barn is one of the places that got more , because it is right up against the foothills there , which often get hit worse - I guess because the mountain weather kind of leaks out onto the Front Range . To illustrate why it is that I say winters in Colorado aren 't that bad , I took before and after pictures . Here is what it looked like at the barn Thursday afternoon when I was there . It was at least 65 degrees and gorgeous : Here is the same view this afternoon , after a day and a half of sun . As you can see , the snow is virtually gone except for on the foothills and mountains , and the driveway is only slightly muddy . The sand footing in the arena was a bit waterlogged , but it 'll probably be rideable by tomorrow afternoon . Truth be told , I probably could have gotten almost the same picture yesterday afternoon , but I forgot my camera . There was slightly more snow and it was muddier , that was the only difference . That 's 8 + inches of snow , gone within 36 hours ! And no , that 's not uncommon in Colorado - I 've lived here nearly all my life , and snow here doesn 't melt , it evaporates . This is why I 've always ridden throughout the winter , even before I had an indoor arena ! We may get some big storms in Denver , but not that often , and the snow doesn 't stick around for very long afterward ! Labels : weather When I got to the barn this morning , the first thing I saw was this : . . . A new horse in Panama 's corral . Next thing I saw was this : . . . Panama and Breezy napping together on the other side of the corral . What a surprise that was ! They have been closer since KZ died , but even though Breezy was calling for him incessantly when I rode , she still was making him keep his distance somewhat in the corral . Said distance was just shrinking . I guess , now that there is a new horse in the corral , Breezy has given up and accepted Panama as her companion . When I started walking out to get him , I noticed there was hay in and underneath the feeder partway down the south side of the corral , where Panama used to get his feed back when KZ and Breezy wouldn 't let him near the troughs . There 's a new third wheel , and this time it 's not Panama ! There was definitely some tension when I went out to get Panama . I couldn 't tell who was chasing who , whether Panama was getting chased or was blocking the new horse from coming up to me ( I suspect the latter ) . Once I caught Panama , I had to run some interference in order to get out of the corral without the new guy coming right along with us . I 'd gotten to the barn too late to go for a trail ride , which turned out to be okay because Panama was so distracted . There was a lot going on at the barn , and it had him on edge and impatient . Our trail riding buddies , Zans and his mom , came back from a trail ride with another boarder around this time , and Lady 's mom arrived as well . Then , while Panama and Lady were enjoying a short turnout together , the new horse 's mom arrived as well . It turns out that Mozart , who arrived last night , is on the older side - 21 - which I think is about perfect , since Breezy is older and Panama is a fairly submissive youngster who knows his place . As for his owner , she is young - a college student at the University of Denver - and although I 'm not sure yet what I think of her , she seems okay . Regardless , we 'll be seeing a lot of one another , as she will be at the barn arounposted by Katharine Swan @ 8 : 35 PM The theme of yesterday and today has been riding with friends . . . and still paying attention to Mom . Both days have been gorgeous , so a lot of our friends have been out taking advantage of the good weather . Yesterday during our lesson , Panama 's girlfriend Lady was being ridden in the outdoor arena at the same time as us , which was the biggest challenge we 've faced yet . He 's ridden in the same arena as his buddies before and been fine , but Lady is Different with a capital D . ( Remember how easily he chooses Lady over his friends ? ) As I expected , he was quite distracted with Lady around . Even before she and her owner made it to the arena , he could see her being tacked up , and tried to speed up every time he was heading in her direction . He continued to be very distracted once she was in the arena with him . We rode on one end and she and her owner rode on the other , and ( under my trainer 's tutelage ) I worked on keeping his focus on me instead of Lady . We didn 't accomplish anything major yesterday , but we did reinforce the idea that when we 're riding , he needs to pay attention to me , no matter who is around or what is going on . We had to work on little things like keeping a round circle at one end of the arena - his tendency was to resist turning away from the end where Lady was , so our circle was rather jagged for a little while . We spent our entire hour on paying attention in the face of the Supreme Distraction , and I think we are that much the better for it - especially since I would like to be able to trail ride with Lady 's mom this year ! Today I rushed out to the barn , hoping that Zans 's mom would be out there . Zans is an older Fresian / Thoroughbred cross , and although he and Panama have never played together , his mom and I are often there at the same time . Zans and Panama spend a lot of time in the tie stalls next to one another , so as far as they are concerned , that makes them buddies . I was hoping Zans and his mom would be hitting the trail this morning , and to my delight , I got there just in time . I didn 't take posted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 00 PM It 's been a while since my last post on horse - related news , but this article was just too good to pass up . Have you ever wondered how well your horse remembers things , or how well he understands what you say ? Turns out horses are better at both than the conventional thinking allows : Horses never forget human friends : Research also shows horses understand words better than expectedFor some of you , this will come as no surprise . For instance , back when we had first rescued Panama , he was staying on my in - laws ' pasture in another state . I saw him a few times a year when we came for visits , but I got the feeling he remembered me because of the way his trust carried over from one visit to the next . ( Keep in mind he was practically wild back then , with little or no handling by humans in his short life . ) I also am pretty sure he understands quite a bit . For instance , a new trick of his is to start trotting when he hears my trainer tell me to pick up a trot . The amazing thing is not that he has learned that a specific action follows her words , but that he has learned to tell those words apart from all the other things she tells me during a lesson . ( Keep in mind that she 's talking to me , not him , so she is speaking in a normal voice , with no special inflection such as with the sing - song trrr - OT we use as a lunging command . He 's picking the words out of normal speech patterns , which is thought to be harder for animals to differentiate . ) In what ways does your horse 's memory or understanding surprise or impress you ? Labels : horsey headlines Not long ago , I wrote about how I wasn 't able to canter on Panama because he was acting so - well - green . I 'm happy to report though that yesterday 's lesson turned CAN ' T - ering into CAN - tering . Initially I was thinking that Panama was going to be a real pill to ride . He was acting antsy in the cross ties , and when he pooped , his manure was pretty loose - nervous manure . Uh - oh , I thought . But under saddle he turned out to be fine . Better than fine . We rode indoors , and as we 've been doing lately , I got a nice walk and trot out of him almost right away . My trainer had me practice trotting a lot , alternating between posting and doing my two - point . Then she announced that she wanted me to canter in a few minutes . Predictably , I started to get a bit nervous , but she said that since he and I were both very controlled , she wanted to take advantage of our good day . I was nervous , but when it came time I " just did it " - something I wouldn 't have been able to do 9 months ago , I can tell you that . And she was right ! Panama was a little hesitant at first , not really believing we were actually going to canter , but the result was a nice , slow , controlled canter . My trainer counted out three strides and asked me to bring him down , and I thought , Already ? I would have been happy to keep going . We took a walk break , and that 's when the adrenaline started to kick in . I was trembling ever so slightly and feeling quite giddy . We walked and trotted a bit more , so that he 'd stop anticipating the canter so much , and then we cantered again . This time the canter wasn 't quite so good . He was a bit more forward - he was still anticipating it , obviously - and I felt my two - point falter a bit . It took a stride to get back to where I was supposed to be . Once I was balanced , my trainer counted out three strides , and had me pull him up again . Although it was a short lesson by about ten minutes , cantering twice really wore me out . Luckily , my trainer said she was happy to stop on that note . She had me trot him around a little more , and we wposted by Katharine Swan @ 9 : 05 PM I 've been very busy for the last few days ( particularly after the Amazon fiasco broke on Monday ) , so I haven 't had a chance to ride Panama since his gelding friend died Saturday evening . I 've been out there several times to blanket and unblanket , though , and each time Panama acts like he wants me to stay longer - and Breezy ( the mare ) whinnies repeatedly to Panama every time I take him from the corral , leaving her alone . As a result of being upset and not having been ridden since Friday , I was expecting Panama to be a bit of a handful today . Quite the opposite turned out to be true . When I turned him out he didn 't want to run , but wanted to stand with me instead , and he kept biting at my clothes periodically - he 'd bite down and tug a little , so I think he was feeling needy and wanted attention . He was also fairly subdued when we rode . We rode inside , partly because I didn 't feel like getting a runny nose from the wind and partly because I didn 't want him to be distracted by Breezy 's whinnies . He had a nice walk with a relaxed headset , and when we trotted he gave me a nice slow trot right off the bat . My trainer set up ground poles for us and we got a pretty good ride in - I felt deliciously sore afterward , and he seemed to be in a good mood . Who knows , maybe exercise is good for a horse 's mood , just like it is good for a person 's ! Labels : horseback riding Today when I got out to the barn , I immediately realized that the old gelding was missing from Panama 's corral . I think I knew immediately what had happened , especially when I realized the fur on Panama 's chest and neck was stiff and spiky - like he 'd gotten ridiculously sweaty and then dried . I asked , and it turned out that the old gelding colicked , twisted a gut , and had to be euthanized last night . As soon as I was told that , I remembered KZ lying down yesterday afternoon when I stopped in to take Panama 's sheet off . I mentioned it to the barn owner , and she immediately said to say something next time , because if someone had caught it sooner he might have made it . So now I feel terrible , even though I know that 1 ) I was only there for about 5 minutes , and there were tons of people out there yesterday who were out there longer than I was and would have had more of a chance than I did to notice ; and 2 ) it 's not like he was acting like he was colicking . He rolled a little bit and then laid there , as if sunbathing . That 's what I thought he was doing , and I had no reason to think otherwise . It makes me feel even worse that Panama and the mare are both really upset . He had gotten sweaty because the mare 's trainer took her out of the corral this morning to groom her , and Panama lost his marbles - ran himself into a froth and called for her over and over again . I got a similar response from her when I took Panama out of the corral this afternoon to turn him out in the arena . Both horses are so upset by the loss of KZ that , while they were never friends before , now they are concerned about being separated . I 've been told I shouldn 't feel responsible , and I know that 's probably true , but I also know that I will never again pass a horse that is lying down without checking them . I usually do check them , that 's the worst part , but yesterday I was in too big of a hurry to pay much attention . I literally was only there long enough to remove Panama 's sheet . In honor of KZ , here are a few pictures . This one was taken way back iposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 51 PM Panama ( and all the other horses at the barn ) started shedding weeks ago . Probably since he has a thinner coat than most of the horses , Panama isn 't shedding as badly , but I may still have to consider blanketing him a bit more liberally in March and April . Denver gets a lot of heavy snow in the spring , but enough warm weather between snowstorms that the horses aren 't really prepared for the cold and the wet . When I took these pictures earlier this winter , though , I was thinking a lot about winter coats , whiskers , and fuzzy ears . My trainer comments periodically that I need to trim Panama 's whiskers . Once I did take her advice , but since then I 've decided I prefer him all - natural . I changed my mind because I read that horses use their whiskers to feel when things are close to their mouth . That made sense . And of course you 'd never cut a cat 's whiskers , so why do that to a horse ? I 've also been advised to fold his ears and cut the longest hairs . Again , I did once or twice , but I 've since decided not to do that anymore , either . I do trim a rather sloppy bridle path with the scissors , but otherwise I don 't pull or trim his mane . . . . . . or his tail . In fact , I want that tail to grow , grow , grow , and often braid it in the winter to try to help it grow out ! Nor do I clip his body hair . My trainer would do it if I wanted , but I don 't . I don 't like the way it looks , for one thing , and I don 't mind sticking around to until he dries after a ride , which has only been necessary a few times this winter . What about you ? What do you trim on your horse , and what do you prefer to leave natural ? Labels : grooming Panama had a playdate with his friend Voodoo yesterday . They had tons of fun running together - until Lady joined them ! Then Panama was all business , making sure Voodoo knew his place - which was , of course , as far away from Lady as possible . Labels : videos Panama was being a bit impatient in the cross ties today , and that made me curious about how he does when I 'm not around . As you can see , it 's quite a different story ! Even though he watches for me the entire time , he does stand pretty quietly . He didn 't appreciate the chicken 's input , though ! I love how he always nickers or whinnies to me when I come back ! Labels : horse behavior I just thought I would share this interesting article with my readers : Understanding Horse Intelligence . It 's a few years old , but it 's a great article . For most of us who work with horses , none of this will come as a surprise . We all know that horses think and learn . It still surprises me , though , that some people believe horses have no cognitive abilities , that all they are capable of is instinct and conditioned responses . Like I said , anyone who has spent time with horses - and truly paid attention - knows that is not true ! Another part of the article that I found interesting is where it debunks the myth that horses " can 't transfer information from one eye to the other . " Research actually indicates otherwise . Most likely horses are just startled when an object looks different from another angle . We all know that they are easily startled by anything looking different , even something so simple as a trash can being in a different place , so this explanation actually makes perfect sense . I personally think horses are incredibly smart creatures . They learn incredibly quickly , if you think about it ; they are able to learn and respond to our language and our commands ; and they can even learn to overcome some pretty powerful instincts that hundreds of years of evolution has instilled in them . Moreover , I 've seen plenty that indicates they have a sense of self - they can imagine what they look like to someone else - which is generally considered to be a pretty advanced cognitive skill ! Labels : horse behavior I 've had discipline on my mind a lot lately . Last week , my trainer wanted me to get Panama in trouble for spooking at something , whereas my approach has been not to get mad at him , but to tell him " Quit " or " No " in a calm voice , circle back , and ride him right by the same spot where he goosed . Maybe my approach doesn 't get the fastest results , but I believe it works , and I think Panama has been quicker to calm down in the indoor arena since I started taking this approach . Then today , we had a repeat of this incident . Panama wasn 't focusing , my trainer got impatient and frustrated , and everything got worse from there . Interestingly , when I left the arena midway through the session to talk to another boarder , Panama completely lost whatever focus he 'd had , and my trainer had to give up on the arena entirely . She took him back to the obstacle course behind the arena to give him something else to think about until I came back . When I returned , she asked if I wanted to get on . " I need to get off , " she said . " Sure , " I said . As I was getting ready to mount , I said , " I 've been really agonizing over how to say this , but . . . I think that Panama responds really poorly to impatience . " To my surprise , my trainer agreed , and said she knew he and she had probably been feeding off of one another 's frustration . I mentioned that I 've been trying to respond to things without getting mad at him , and said that he 'd calmed down pretty quickly yesterday when I rode him , even after the excitement of his first experience with a hair dryer . She had to leave , but asked me to do some walking and trotting so that the ride would end on a more positive note . He was still pretty revved up , and was further distracted by a new horse that was trailered in as we worked , but he did calm down enough to give me what I wanted : a consistent pace at the trot in both directions before we quit for the day . It has occurred to me that my trainer and I have different expectations of Panama . I don 't mind if he spooks occasionally , but I do expect him to recover from posted by Katharine Swan @ 6 : 08 PM It all started because I left Panama 's blanket on too long . I didn 't go to the barn right away this morning because the forecast had called for snow today . By the time I figured out they were wrong - AGAIN - it was in the high 30s . Panama wasn 't sweating or anything , but he was warm enough that his first order of business was this : That was actually the second time he rolled . He was pretty clean when I first took off the blanket . By the time he was done rolling , he was caked with arena sand soup . The startlingly white spots , such as behind his elbow , in the curve behind his withers , and here next to his tail , amuse me ! I was planning to ride , but obviously I couldn 't put a saddle on over all that sand , and toweling it off wasn 't working . So rather than waiting for it to dry so I could curry it off , I had the bright idea of rinsing him off in the indoor wash rack . It is much warmer inside on cold days , so it was probably 50 degrees inside . I rinsed his legs first , then his butt . I squeegeed his butt off and laid a towel over it to keep him from getting chilled while I rinsed his back , belly , and shoulders . I avoided getting his chest and neck wet - his chest because it wasn 't dirty , and his neck because I thought it would make him too cold . The bath part was really nice . I made the water warm , and Panama seemed happy enough . It was quiet in the barn , so it felt like a private moment for just the two of us . Then I toweled him off and put his cooler on him . Although Panama never started shivering , I was really concerned about him getting chilled . We walked around inside for a while , until the boarder ( who helps out around the barn ) came back to groom the arena . Panama still was pretty wet , and I was afraid he would get chilled outside in just his cooler , so I took him to the cross ties and threw his winter blanket on while I hunted down a hair dryer . Now , Panama has never seen a hair dryer before , so once I found one I knew I needed to introduce it slowly . I let Panama sniff it , then plugged it in and held it in fronposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 08 PM |
This morning I had plans to go on a trail ride with a couple of boarders who ride regularly once or twice a week during the nicer weather . Unfortunately , when I got there I discovered Panama was in a tizzy - someone was driving a tractor around on the road , right by the far end of Panama 's corral , and apparently it had him all revved up . He was on high alert in the cross ties , pawing and pooping , I guess because he could still hear the tractor and it made him nervous . He even tried a couple of little half - rears , like he was going to try to break out of the cross ties , but I pitched my gloves at him and that ended that . I decided to ride him in the outdoor arena a little while everyone else was still getting ready . My goal was to walk him in circles and give him something to do to calm him down , but it didn 't work very well - at least not that I could tell at the time . In fact , he even bolted on me once when a truck came down the driveway - something that wouldn 't normally bother him , but today sent him into a frenzy . He cantered for 2 or 3 strides before I was able to pull him up , and we went back to circling . As the other riders got ready , they started to congregate in the field right behind the outdoor arena . Panama seemed to know we were going with them , or at least that he wanted to go with them , because he got upset every time it looked like they were going to ride away . I was having a hard time keeping him at a walk , and I think he tried a half - hearted buck once when I used a one - rein stop to keep him from running away again . I was pretty close to not going on the ride after all , but part of me didn 't want to give in . Plus , I was thinking he might be better on the trail , surrounded by other ( calm ) horses . So I opened the gate from horseback and rode out into the field to join the other boarders . I can remember thinking as we left that I was going to regret my decision , but in actuality I ended up being really glad I 'd stuck with it . Panama was tense for the first ten minutes or so , but he did calm down anposted by Katharine Swan @ 10 : 41 PM Today was gorgeous - sunny and windy , but I heard it hit 80 degrees in the afternoon . I don 't doubt it ! Despite the beautiful day , though , I was having a hard time motivating myself to go out to the barn . I really felt like staying in all day , blogging and working at a slower pace . ( When I spend a lot of time out at the barn , I generally have to hustle so that I can still get my work done with the time I 've got left , and it 's harder to find time to blog . ) I wasted so much time feeling guilty about staying home , though , that I finally headed out there around mid - afternoon . And of course , I ended up being really glad I did . It was beautiful , if a little too windy for my tastes . I saddled Panama up and we went to the outdoor arena to ride . Within a few minutes , Panama 's third best girl and her owner had joined us , and we rode for a while at a walk , side by side , chatting away . I did get some trotting in when Flash took a break to pee , but kept getting stage fright , so her owner had to dismount and wait for her to relax enough to go . Panama and I trotted in circles at the other end in the meantime , but otherwise the theme of the ride was taking it easy . We also went out and made a loop around the field . This involved riding past the junk pile that scared Panama into a spin and bolt a while back . Panama was even on the left side , which meant that he had a clear view of the concrete sewage tunnel that freaked him out so much before , and he still walked past it just fine . His head was up and his ears were perked , and he was looking around at everything , but he never once spooked or even tensed . Meanwhile , Flash was balking and spooking in place right beside us , and he still kept his cool . I was so proud of him ! On our way back , I spotted one of the boarders that does a lot of trail rides , turning her horse out to roll in the outdoor arena . I called out to her , and she invited me on their next trail ride . I 'm looking forward to it - it 'll be good to get out into the park again ! The warm weather should hold for another couposted by Katharine Swan @ 9 : 18 PM Sometimes you just have to lie down and take it ! It was a lovely day out at the barn today . Pretty much everyone was napping . I groomed Panama , but by the time I got done shedding him out , currying his legs , and trimming the dried mud from his fetlocks , I didn 't much feel like a long ride . Therefore we only rode for about 15 minutes outside , but it was a nice relaxing ride ! Panama and Daisy seem to be doing well . Apparently she let him know who was boss yesterday afternoon at feed time , but I think that is to be expected . Otherwise , they are together quite a bit - perhaps more Panama 's choice than hers , as he sticks to her like glue , but ( as is evident from the pictures above ) she isn 't doing anything to discourage it . Watch out , Lady - you 've got competition ! Labels : horse behavior I know many of you don 't like Fugly , but this is one cause I think everyone agrees is a good one . Three years ago , a man named Tony Meyers commenced a violent attack upon a horse at a horse auction . The horse nearly died after he dragged her from his trailer with a barbed wire - wrapped halter , ran her over and shot her . She survived but it has taken almost three years for his case to come to trial and it 's going to be heard starting on Tuesday at the St . Martinsville Court . This is an excerpt from today 's Fugly post . I think we can all agree that Tony Meyers is the worst kind of horse owner and ought to be in jail , not free to buy more horses . Fugly is simply asking that we contact the local media and encourage them to run the story . The more publicity it gets , the more public interest , and the more likely he 'll get the maximum sentence . Please send the media your emails ( you can copy and paste from Cathy 's phone script ) , and repost the plea on your blog , facebook , etc . No one should be allowed to get away with treating a horse like this ! Labels : animal rights Well , it 's getting to be that time , and many of the mares at the barn are in heat right now . It means that there is a lot of ear - pinning and conversation going on , and it also means that Panama is even more interested than usual in all the girls . By Thursday morning , by hand was no longer sensitive to friction ( remember , I burned it with boiling water Tuesday morning ) , so I went out to the barn to ride . Unfortunately , everyone else had the same idea at the same time . Mozart , the new gelding in Panama 's corral , and Zans were both being ridden in the indoor at the same time as Panama and I , since the outdoor arena was still too mucky from our last snowstorm . Panama was doing pretty well with it , but that fell apart when Lady 's owner brought her in , too . Lady 's owner commented that she was uncharacteristically " up , " and although it didn 't occur to me at the time , I 'll bet she was in heat like all the rest of the mares at the barn . In any case , Panama was very distracted with Lady around , wanting to speed up when her rider cantered her by us , and was so interested in getting to where she was all the time that I could practically feel all of his energy leaning in her direction . Yesterday we also had a busy arena . Three young girls were having a group riding lesson , complete with a low crossrail set up toward one end of the arena . Add two other horses and riders , and two instructors ( one of them mine ) , and me and Panama , and you have quite the crowd ! In retrospect , I think at least two of the mares in that crowded arena were in heat , because there was a lot of ear - pinning and whinnying going on . Every time one of the mares would whinny , Panama 's head would shoot up and his ears would shoot forward . He did get used to it after a little bit , but in the beginning I could tell his mare radar was on overload . Riding in a crowded arena was good for us , both days . I found that maneuvering around other riders kept me looking up and kept me from getting too bored , as there was always something new to focus on . On Friday we even walkposted by Katharine Swan @ 12 : 52 AM We got hit with another snowstorm last night . Like many spring snows , it was really wet and heavy snow . It also fell pretty quickly - it started snowing around 5pm , and within a few hours looked like it had been snowing all day . The lawns , cars , trees , and roads were covered with soggy - looking snow , looking more like we had eight inches of waterlogged cotton balls . After that the snow slowed , and although it continued falling lightly all night , most of what we got fell yesterday evening . This morning it was still misting snow . There was a ton of snow on the ground , so Michael stayed home from work . Turned out the roads were just wet , though , and when the sun came out around midday , the already - wet snow started melting like crazy . I was glad for the snow day , though , even if it wasn 't entirely necessary . We got out to the barn this afternoon , and I took Panama 's blanket off of him for about an hour . It was still a touch chilly , and it will be cold tonight , though , so I put it back on before we left . The snow on the driveway was already melting , and everything out there was quite sloppy . I turned Panama out in the arena without his blanket , thinking he might want to roll , but the sloppy , wet snow was too gross for him . So instead I made snowballs , a couple of which he ate out of my hand like an apple , and a few of which I tossed onto his back to see what he 'd do . ( Nothing . ) Here 's what the barn looks like after a half - melted wet snow ( which will probably be almost all gone tomorrow ) : And Panama 's corral : Shortly after snapping that picture , I called to Panama , " Do you want a carrot ? " Both geldings ' heads immediately shot up . Ha - I guess mine isn 't the only horse who knows what that means . Panama and Mozart seem to be getting along pretty well . They appear to be on equal footing - neither is the boss , at least for now . They act more like brothers than anything else , and can eat right next to one another without any ear - pinning or other posturing . Well , except for this incident . CHOMPI don 't know what that little biteposted by Katharine Swan @ 6 : 45 PM Poor Panama . Just when he was recovering from the old gelding 's death , the old mare , Breezy , was moved . They were just starting to buddy up , too , and I was thinking that at least there was a bright spot in the loss of KZ . I guess she left yesterday . My trainer said that while she was teaching a lesson , she could hear Panama hollering the entire time . She didn 't realize what was wrong until she noticed the old mare was gone . We have another snowstorm coming in tonight , so I was out this afternoon to blanket Panama . ( I was originally supposed to have a lesson myself , but after I burned my hand this morning by accidentally pouring boiling water over it , I realized I wasn 't going to be able to hold the reins comfortably and canceled . ) It was raining when I arrived , so Panama and Mozart were hanging out in the shed , but I guess they 'd been running back and forth hollering all day - especially Panama . And when I took him out of the corral , Mozart stood out in the rain and whinnied for him repeatedly . Although my hand wasn 't hurting as much thanks to the ibuprofen I took , I still wasn 't going to ride , mainly because I 'd taken my saddle , saddle pad , girth , and bridle home to clean everything up - and forgotten to bring it all back . ( I do have a trail bridle and an extra set of reins , so I could have ridden bareback , but I 'm not risking that when he 's upset about losing a pasturemate and there 's a storm rolling in . ) Instead , I took advantage of the fact that he was damp to do another session with the blow dryer . This time I had my own blow dryer and an extension cord ( the former from FreeCycle - I love FreeCycle ! - and the latter something Michael picked up for me last time he went to the store ) . Panama found he couldn 't move out of the blow dryer 's reach , but as I expected , it wasn 't a big deal . He didn 't act as ticklish on his flanks and loins , this time - though he did just about blast off like a rocket when I unthinkingly blew it on his belly without any warning . Silly horse ! It was too warm still for a heavy blaposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 17 PM At a bookstore a couple of months ago , I spotted this book and spent the rest of our visit flipping through it . Although I love Cherry Hill 's books , I read about half of it during that visit and decided I didn 't think it was worth buying . After checking it out from the library , though , I 've changed my mind - there was actually a lot of useful stuff in the book , and it wasn 't geared toward beginners quite as much as I initially thought . I will probably end up buying it at some point , as it seems like a good one to have on my bookshelf . I really like many of Hill 's thoughts about horses . I have another book of hers , Cherry Hill 's Horsekeeping Almanac , which I 've been reading in bits and pieces for a while now , and I love it . Her ideas about horses seem to be practical and sound , and I like her balance between traditional and natural horsemanship . One of the things I noticed is that this book supports something I 've always said , that I think it 's just fine , and even helpful , to use voice commands with your horse . Some people who follow natural horsemanship claim that voice commands are unnecessary and confusing , but I personally find that they are useful and comfortable for both me and Panama . Here are a few things that Hill has to say about it : " Good horsemen can often be observed communicating with a horse in a type of low - level ' breaking patter , ' a term from bygone cowboy days . It describes a type of low - volume mumbling a cowboy might use around a horse that he is training . The soothing tones calm the horse . Hence the term horse whisperer . " ( page 30 ) " The reason clinicians do not advocate voice commands more often is because most of them are talking constantly to the audience , and it would be difficult for a horse to distinguish a voice command out of all that . Voice commands are not customary in most show ring settings but they can be a means to an end such as " Whoa " when a reiner asks his horse for a sliding stop . In most at - home training situations , voice commands are not only appropriate but also very effective . " ( page 124 ) Another thing I 've often said that Hill appears to agree with me on is that you need to maintain a position of alpha over your horses . By this I don 't mean an aggressive alpha , but I do mean a leader who must also be respected . Hill says : " Pecking order is most evident at feeding time . You can easily tell a human 's rank among horses by watching as she feeds them . If the horses come charging into the person 's space and she drops the feed and turns tail , one of the horses is definitely on top . " ( page 59 ) There is an awful lot of information in this book , far more than the quotes I remembered to mark so that I could blog about them later . The book covers everything from body language to bad habits to training , and is a great resource for both beginners and people who already own horses . A little something here for everyone ! Labels : horse book reviews This afternoon after Michael and I left the barn , he pointed out a couple of elk just off one of the exits . Despite the fact that I 've lived in Colorado almost all of my life , I 'd never seen one in person ( let alone practically in the suburbs ) , so I insisted that he circle back around and get off the highway so I could take some pictures . It turned out there were four of them , two grazing right next next to the road and two above them on the hill . The one with the antlers was watching all the people stopping in their cars to look , while his companion mooned us . The two grazing didn 't seem to care one bit that they were grazing within ten feet of the cars - just on the other side of the sidewalk . At first I thought it was a bull and three cows , but I was wondering about their lumpy looking foreheads so when I got home I looked it up . Turns out they were all males - apparently when they shed their horns ( which they do every year ) they form bachelor bands for protection . Seeing elk in person , they are not the majestic creatures you 'd think . They are actually surprisingly awkward - looking , the way they are put together . But it was cool nevertheless ! Labels : miscellaneous The other day I posted a picture of one of the cute calves that have been gamboling around the pasture out where I board my horse . They were all out today , enjoying the weather , playing and harassing their mothers . There are a bunch of all - black calves , but there is one with a cute white face and a black - speckled nose . Her name is Sally . See ? I 'm guessing Sally is more of a pet , since the others have numbers on their tags instead of names . Also Sally seems a little bit less afraid of people , like she 's being handled by someone . She didn 't come up to me , but she thought about it a whole lot harder than the others . The calves are ridiculously cute , especially the way they play - just like puppies . One was chasing its mother , bouncing around at her heels as she plodded along , clearly unconcerned . Another ran behind its mother and peered at me from behind her legs when I came closer to the fence . Wish I 'd gotten a picture of that ! Panama is really interested in the cows . Today I took him up to the fence and he sniffed noses with one before she snorted and backed away , but I think she was more scared of me than him . When I tried to lead Panama away , he didn 't want to go ! Sometimes I wonder if he 'd enjoy life as a cow pony . . . We had an exciting day today , so stay tuned for some more pictures ! Labels : miscellaneous It always amuses me when people make comments about how bad they think the weather in Colorado must be . My out - of - state bloggy friends often say things like how lucky I am to be able to ride in the winter in Colorado , and that sort of thing . You might know that we had a big snowstorm on Friday . Between late Thursday night and late Friday night , Denver got about 8 inches - possibly more in some areas - of snow . I suspect the barn is one of the places that got more , because it is right up against the foothills there , which often get hit worse - I guess because the mountain weather kind of leaks out onto the Front Range . To illustrate why it is that I say winters in Colorado aren 't that bad , I took before and after pictures . Here is what it looked like at the barn Thursday afternoon when I was there . It was at least 65 degrees and gorgeous : Here is the same view this afternoon , after a day and a half of sun . As you can see , the snow is virtually gone except for on the foothills and mountains , and the driveway is only slightly muddy . The sand footing in the arena was a bit waterlogged , but it 'll probably be rideable by tomorrow afternoon . Truth be told , I probably could have gotten almost the same picture yesterday afternoon , but I forgot my camera . There was slightly more snow and it was muddier , that was the only difference . That 's 8 + inches of snow , gone within 36 hours ! And no , that 's not uncommon in Colorado - I 've lived here nearly all my life , and snow here doesn 't melt , it evaporates . This is why I 've always ridden throughout the winter , even before I had an indoor arena ! We may get some big storms in Denver , but not that often , and the snow doesn 't stick around for very long afterward ! Labels : weather When I got to the barn this morning , the first thing I saw was this : . . . A new horse in Panama 's corral . Next thing I saw was this : . . . Panama and Breezy napping together on the other side of the corral . What a surprise that was ! They have been closer since KZ died , but even though Breezy was calling for him incessantly when I rode , she still was making him keep his distance somewhat in the corral . Said distance was just shrinking . I guess , now that there is a new horse in the corral , Breezy has given up and accepted Panama as her companion . When I started walking out to get him , I noticed there was hay in and underneath the feeder partway down the south side of the corral , where Panama used to get his feed back when KZ and Breezy wouldn 't let him near the troughs . There 's a new third wheel , and this time it 's not Panama ! There was definitely some tension when I went out to get Panama . I couldn 't tell who was chasing who , whether Panama was getting chased or was blocking the new horse from coming up to me ( I suspect the latter ) . Once I caught Panama , I had to run some interference in order to get out of the corral without the new guy coming right along with us . I 'd gotten to the barn too late to go for a trail ride , which turned out to be okay because Panama was so distracted . There was a lot going on at the barn , and it had him on edge and impatient . Our trail riding buddies , Zans and his mom , came back from a trail ride with another boarder around this time , and Lady 's mom arrived as well . Then , while Panama and Lady were enjoying a short turnout together , the new horse 's mom arrived as well . It turns out that Mozart , who arrived last night , is on the older side - 21 - which I think is about perfect , since Breezy is older and Panama is a fairly submissive youngster who knows his place . As for his owner , she is young - a college student at the University of Denver - and although I 'm not sure yet what I think of her , she seems okay . Regardless , we 'll be seeing a lot of one another , as she will be at the barn arounposted by Katharine Swan @ 8 : 35 PM The theme of yesterday and today has been riding with friends . . . and still paying attention to Mom . Both days have been gorgeous , so a lot of our friends have been out taking advantage of the good weather . Yesterday during our lesson , Panama 's girlfriend Lady was being ridden in the outdoor arena at the same time as us , which was the biggest challenge we 've faced yet . He 's ridden in the same arena as his buddies before and been fine , but Lady is Different with a capital D . ( Remember how easily he chooses Lady over his friends ? ) As I expected , he was quite distracted with Lady around . Even before she and her owner made it to the arena , he could see her being tacked up , and tried to speed up every time he was heading in her direction . He continued to be very distracted once she was in the arena with him . We rode on one end and she and her owner rode on the other , and ( under my trainer 's tutelage ) I worked on keeping his focus on me instead of Lady . We didn 't accomplish anything major yesterday , but we did reinforce the idea that when we 're riding , he needs to pay attention to me , no matter who is around or what is going on . We had to work on little things like keeping a round circle at one end of the arena - his tendency was to resist turning away from the end where Lady was , so our circle was rather jagged for a little while . We spent our entire hour on paying attention in the face of the Supreme Distraction , and I think we are that much the better for it - especially since I would like to be able to trail ride with Lady 's mom this year ! Today I rushed out to the barn , hoping that Zans 's mom would be out there . Zans is an older Fresian / Thoroughbred cross , and although he and Panama have never played together , his mom and I are often there at the same time . Zans and Panama spend a lot of time in the tie stalls next to one another , so as far as they are concerned , that makes them buddies . I was hoping Zans and his mom would be hitting the trail this morning , and to my delight , I got there just in time . I didn 't take posted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 00 PM It 's been a while since my last post on horse - related news , but this article was just too good to pass up . Have you ever wondered how well your horse remembers things , or how well he understands what you say ? Turns out horses are better at both than the conventional thinking allows : Horses never forget human friends : Research also shows horses understand words better than expectedFor some of you , this will come as no surprise . For instance , back when we had first rescued Panama , he was staying on my in - laws ' pasture in another state . I saw him a few times a year when we came for visits , but I got the feeling he remembered me because of the way his trust carried over from one visit to the next . ( Keep in mind he was practically wild back then , with little or no handling by humans in his short life . ) I also am pretty sure he understands quite a bit . For instance , a new trick of his is to start trotting when he hears my trainer tell me to pick up a trot . The amazing thing is not that he has learned that a specific action follows her words , but that he has learned to tell those words apart from all the other things she tells me during a lesson . ( Keep in mind that she 's talking to me , not him , so she is speaking in a normal voice , with no special inflection such as with the sing - song trrr - OT we use as a lunging command . He 's picking the words out of normal speech patterns , which is thought to be harder for animals to differentiate . ) In what ways does your horse 's memory or understanding surprise or impress you ? Labels : horsey headlines Not long ago , I wrote about how I wasn 't able to canter on Panama because he was acting so - well - green . I 'm happy to report though that yesterday 's lesson turned CAN ' T - ering into CAN - tering . Initially I was thinking that Panama was going to be a real pill to ride . He was acting antsy in the cross ties , and when he pooped , his manure was pretty loose - nervous manure . Uh - oh , I thought . But under saddle he turned out to be fine . Better than fine . We rode indoors , and as we 've been doing lately , I got a nice walk and trot out of him almost right away . My trainer had me practice trotting a lot , alternating between posting and doing my two - point . Then she announced that she wanted me to canter in a few minutes . Predictably , I started to get a bit nervous , but she said that since he and I were both very controlled , she wanted to take advantage of our good day . I was nervous , but when it came time I " just did it " - something I wouldn 't have been able to do 9 months ago , I can tell you that . And she was right ! Panama was a little hesitant at first , not really believing we were actually going to canter , but the result was a nice , slow , controlled canter . My trainer counted out three strides and asked me to bring him down , and I thought , Already ? I would have been happy to keep going . We took a walk break , and that 's when the adrenaline started to kick in . I was trembling ever so slightly and feeling quite giddy . We walked and trotted a bit more , so that he 'd stop anticipating the canter so much , and then we cantered again . This time the canter wasn 't quite so good . He was a bit more forward - he was still anticipating it , obviously - and I felt my two - point falter a bit . It took a stride to get back to where I was supposed to be . Once I was balanced , my trainer counted out three strides , and had me pull him up again . Although it was a short lesson by about ten minutes , cantering twice really wore me out . Luckily , my trainer said she was happy to stop on that note . She had me trot him around a little more , and we wposted by Katharine Swan @ 9 : 05 PM I 've been very busy for the last few days ( particularly after the Amazon fiasco broke on Monday ) , so I haven 't had a chance to ride Panama since his gelding friend died Saturday evening . I 've been out there several times to blanket and unblanket , though , and each time Panama acts like he wants me to stay longer - and Breezy ( the mare ) whinnies repeatedly to Panama every time I take him from the corral , leaving her alone . As a result of being upset and not having been ridden since Friday , I was expecting Panama to be a bit of a handful today . Quite the opposite turned out to be true . When I turned him out he didn 't want to run , but wanted to stand with me instead , and he kept biting at my clothes periodically - he 'd bite down and tug a little , so I think he was feeling needy and wanted attention . He was also fairly subdued when we rode . We rode inside , partly because I didn 't feel like getting a runny nose from the wind and partly because I didn 't want him to be distracted by Breezy 's whinnies . He had a nice walk with a relaxed headset , and when we trotted he gave me a nice slow trot right off the bat . My trainer set up ground poles for us and we got a pretty good ride in - I felt deliciously sore afterward , and he seemed to be in a good mood . Who knows , maybe exercise is good for a horse 's mood , just like it is good for a person 's ! Labels : horseback riding Today when I got out to the barn , I immediately realized that the old gelding was missing from Panama 's corral . I think I knew immediately what had happened , especially when I realized the fur on Panama 's chest and neck was stiff and spiky - like he 'd gotten ridiculously sweaty and then dried . I asked , and it turned out that the old gelding colicked , twisted a gut , and had to be euthanized last night . As soon as I was told that , I remembered KZ lying down yesterday afternoon when I stopped in to take Panama 's sheet off . I mentioned it to the barn owner , and she immediately said to say something next time , because if someone had caught it sooner he might have made it . So now I feel terrible , even though I know that 1 ) I was only there for about 5 minutes , and there were tons of people out there yesterday who were out there longer than I was and would have had more of a chance than I did to notice ; and 2 ) it 's not like he was acting like he was colicking . He rolled a little bit and then laid there , as if sunbathing . That 's what I thought he was doing , and I had no reason to think otherwise . It makes me feel even worse that Panama and the mare are both really upset . He had gotten sweaty because the mare 's trainer took her out of the corral this morning to groom her , and Panama lost his marbles - ran himself into a froth and called for her over and over again . I got a similar response from her when I took Panama out of the corral this afternoon to turn him out in the arena . Both horses are so upset by the loss of KZ that , while they were never friends before , now they are concerned about being separated . I 've been told I shouldn 't feel responsible , and I know that 's probably true , but I also know that I will never again pass a horse that is lying down without checking them . I usually do check them , that 's the worst part , but yesterday I was in too big of a hurry to pay much attention . I literally was only there long enough to remove Panama 's sheet . In honor of KZ , here are a few pictures . This one was taken way back iposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 51 PM Panama ( and all the other horses at the barn ) started shedding weeks ago . Probably since he has a thinner coat than most of the horses , Panama isn 't shedding as badly , but I may still have to consider blanketing him a bit more liberally in March and April . Denver gets a lot of heavy snow in the spring , but enough warm weather between snowstorms that the horses aren 't really prepared for the cold and the wet . When I took these pictures earlier this winter , though , I was thinking a lot about winter coats , whiskers , and fuzzy ears . My trainer comments periodically that I need to trim Panama 's whiskers . Once I did take her advice , but since then I 've decided I prefer him all - natural . I changed my mind because I read that horses use their whiskers to feel when things are close to their mouth . That made sense . And of course you 'd never cut a cat 's whiskers , so why do that to a horse ? I 've also been advised to fold his ears and cut the longest hairs . Again , I did once or twice , but I 've since decided not to do that anymore , either . I do trim a rather sloppy bridle path with the scissors , but otherwise I don 't pull or trim his mane . . . . . . or his tail . In fact , I want that tail to grow , grow , grow , and often braid it in the winter to try to help it grow out ! Nor do I clip his body hair . My trainer would do it if I wanted , but I don 't . I don 't like the way it looks , for one thing , and I don 't mind sticking around to until he dries after a ride , which has only been necessary a few times this winter . What about you ? What do you trim on your horse , and what do you prefer to leave natural ? Labels : grooming Panama had a playdate with his friend Voodoo yesterday . They had tons of fun running together - until Lady joined them ! Then Panama was all business , making sure Voodoo knew his place - which was , of course , as far away from Lady as possible . Labels : videos Panama was being a bit impatient in the cross ties today , and that made me curious about how he does when I 'm not around . As you can see , it 's quite a different story ! Even though he watches for me the entire time , he does stand pretty quietly . He didn 't appreciate the chicken 's input , though ! I love how he always nickers or whinnies to me when I come back ! Labels : horse behavior I just thought I would share this interesting article with my readers : Understanding Horse Intelligence . It 's a few years old , but it 's a great article . For most of us who work with horses , none of this will come as a surprise . We all know that horses think and learn . It still surprises me , though , that some people believe horses have no cognitive abilities , that all they are capable of is instinct and conditioned responses . Like I said , anyone who has spent time with horses - and truly paid attention - knows that is not true ! Another part of the article that I found interesting is where it debunks the myth that horses " can 't transfer information from one eye to the other . " Research actually indicates otherwise . Most likely horses are just startled when an object looks different from another angle . We all know that they are easily startled by anything looking different , even something so simple as a trash can being in a different place , so this explanation actually makes perfect sense . I personally think horses are incredibly smart creatures . They learn incredibly quickly , if you think about it ; they are able to learn and respond to our language and our commands ; and they can even learn to overcome some pretty powerful instincts that hundreds of years of evolution has instilled in them . Moreover , I 've seen plenty that indicates they have a sense of self - they can imagine what they look like to someone else - which is generally considered to be a pretty advanced cognitive skill ! Labels : horse behavior I 've had discipline on my mind a lot lately . Last week , my trainer wanted me to get Panama in trouble for spooking at something , whereas my approach has been not to get mad at him , but to tell him " Quit " or " No " in a calm voice , circle back , and ride him right by the same spot where he goosed . Maybe my approach doesn 't get the fastest results , but I believe it works , and I think Panama has been quicker to calm down in the indoor arena since I started taking this approach . Then today , we had a repeat of this incident . Panama wasn 't focusing , my trainer got impatient and frustrated , and everything got worse from there . Interestingly , when I left the arena midway through the session to talk to another boarder , Panama completely lost whatever focus he 'd had , and my trainer had to give up on the arena entirely . She took him back to the obstacle course behind the arena to give him something else to think about until I came back . When I returned , she asked if I wanted to get on . " I need to get off , " she said . " Sure , " I said . As I was getting ready to mount , I said , " I 've been really agonizing over how to say this , but . . . I think that Panama responds really poorly to impatience . " To my surprise , my trainer agreed , and said she knew he and she had probably been feeding off of one another 's frustration . I mentioned that I 've been trying to respond to things without getting mad at him , and said that he 'd calmed down pretty quickly yesterday when I rode him , even after the excitement of his first experience with a hair dryer . She had to leave , but asked me to do some walking and trotting so that the ride would end on a more positive note . He was still pretty revved up , and was further distracted by a new horse that was trailered in as we worked , but he did calm down enough to give me what I wanted : a consistent pace at the trot in both directions before we quit for the day . It has occurred to me that my trainer and I have different expectations of Panama . I don 't mind if he spooks occasionally , but I do expect him to recover from posted by Katharine Swan @ 6 : 08 PM It all started because I left Panama 's blanket on too long . I didn 't go to the barn right away this morning because the forecast had called for snow today . By the time I figured out they were wrong - AGAIN - it was in the high 30s . Panama wasn 't sweating or anything , but he was warm enough that his first order of business was this : That was actually the second time he rolled . He was pretty clean when I first took off the blanket . By the time he was done rolling , he was caked with arena sand soup . The startlingly white spots , such as behind his elbow , in the curve behind his withers , and here next to his tail , amuse me ! I was planning to ride , but obviously I couldn 't put a saddle on over all that sand , and toweling it off wasn 't working . So rather than waiting for it to dry so I could curry it off , I had the bright idea of rinsing him off in the indoor wash rack . It is much warmer inside on cold days , so it was probably 50 degrees inside . I rinsed his legs first , then his butt . I squeegeed his butt off and laid a towel over it to keep him from getting chilled while I rinsed his back , belly , and shoulders . I avoided getting his chest and neck wet - his chest because it wasn 't dirty , and his neck because I thought it would make him too cold . The bath part was really nice . I made the water warm , and Panama seemed happy enough . It was quiet in the barn , so it felt like a private moment for just the two of us . Then I toweled him off and put his cooler on him . Although Panama never started shivering , I was really concerned about him getting chilled . We walked around inside for a while , until the boarder ( who helps out around the barn ) came back to groom the arena . Panama still was pretty wet , and I was afraid he would get chilled outside in just his cooler , so I took him to the cross ties and threw his winter blanket on while I hunted down a hair dryer . Now , Panama has never seen a hair dryer before , so once I found one I knew I needed to introduce it slowly . I let Panama sniff it , then plugged it in and held it in fronposted by Katharine Swan @ 7 : 08 PM |
Three weeks after Fourth of July Bradin was in the surf shop rearranging some of the wet suits , when he overhead two guys talking . The two guys were in their early twenties , and were talking about surfing at night . Bradin had never heard of this , so he stuck around to eavesdrop on the conversation . The first guy said , " The surf was great last night . " " Don 't be such a pussy . It was the best surfing I 've ever had . There was absolutely no one else there . I mean no one even on the beach , and the waves were perfect . It was the best . I 'm telling you , you 've got to try it . " " Okay , if I was a moron , I could drown , but since I 'm not , all I 'd have to do is grab the line , and pull myself to the surfboard if I got disoriented . I 've done it twice now , and it was amazing . It gave me such a sense of freedom and power . It 's like nothing matters but me and the waves . " The first guy walked out and Steve followed him . Bradin stood there thinking about it . He wasn 't taking surfing lessons from Erica anymore , because he was getting pretty good on his own . Surfing at night sounded kind of fun to him . He went over to Jay who was finishing up with a customer at the cash register . Once the customer was gone , Bradin said , " Hey . " Bradin nodded and went out to do that . He kept thinking about night surfing and wondered what it would be like . Later that day Erica came into the store . She kissed Jay and started helping out . When Jay went to have a lunch break , Bradin went to Erica and said , " Hi . " Erica smiled mischievously and said , " I did it once . My mom had just left , and I was really angry and confused . I 've known how to surf since I can remember , because my dad used to teach it , so I wanted to try something new and more dangerous . I got out there , and I was so scared I could barely get up . The ocean is different at night . But I did get up , and I made it to the shore . " " My dad had noticed me missing , and he was walking on the beach when he found me . I was sitting in the sand crying next to my surfboard . Kind of pathetic huh ? " Erica squeezed his shoulder and said , " I 've never tried it since , and I don 't plan to . It really was terrifying . Dad said I was lucky to make it back to shore , but I thought that was a little overly dramatic . " Bradin nodded and went to help a customer . Bradin thought about night surfing the rest of the day . He couldn 't get the idea out of his head . He knew it was a bad idea . He knew it was dangerous , and as far as he knew he didn 't have a desire to kill himself , but he still kept thinking about trying it anyway . After dinner that night he went upstairs to read a book , and ended up still thinking about it . He knew for sure that none of the adults in the house would let him do it , but he still wanted to try . That night Bradin had trouble getting to sleep . He had been trying , and he was sure everyone else in the house was asleep . He sat up and looked out his window . He could see his surfboard down by the pool house . Since the incident when Derrick nicked it , Bradin had decided not to keep it in their room . He thought to himself , ' Maybe I 'll just go out to the beach , and see what it looks like . ' He walked downstairs and out the back door . He was still in his pajamas , but he didn 't think anyone else would be on the beach . He walked out to the beach and sat to watch the waves for a while . They were hypnotic , and looked inviting . He did see a bonfire down the beach with a few people around it , but they were too far away for him to hear . Half an hour later he went back home and was able to get some sleep . The next day he found himself daydreaming about surfing at night off and on . He didn 't have to work at the surf shop , so he had the day to himself . He was hanging out at the beach enjoying the sun when his sister Nikki came up and sat next to him . She said , " Nice day . " She stood up to go and Bradin caught her wrist before she could go . He could tell she was sad , and they had been close before their parents had died . He said , " Sit with me ? " She smiled and nodded . They sat together in comfortable silence both with their own thoughts . Bradin had the stray thought that maybe he couldn 't get night surfing out of his head , because he didn 't want to keep thinking about his parents . Then he decided that even if it were true , he really didn 't care . That day before any adults came home , he stuffed an overnight bag with his wetsuit , and a towel . He stashed it under a bush by the house . Later after everyone was asleep Bradin went out to the beach again , but this time he brought his bag and his surfboard . This night there was no one else out on the beach that he could see . There was a huge piece of driftwood that was more like a large tree trunk that had washed ashore years ago , and was now in the middle of the beach . He had sat on it many times , and the whole family used it as a landmark , because it was close to their house . Bradin looked out to the waves and again felt they were calling to him . He turned around 180 degrees , and saw no one . He shrugged his shoulders and got undressed right where he was . He put on his wet suit , and attached the leash from his surfboard to his ankle . He stood there a few more minutes looking at the beach , and headed towards the water . When the water first hit him he was shocked at how cold it was . With no sun out , the water seemed much colder , and it took him a few minutes to get all the way into the waves . Once he was all wet he got on the surfboard and paddled out . When he got to where the waves were starting he turned around and looked to shore . He felt a moment of panic when he couldn 't really see where the beach was . He could see the lights of the hotels , but not really where the ocean ended and the sand began . He sat on his board and closed his eyes . He smelled the salt water , and felt the waves under him . He opened his eyes and said to himself , " You can do it . " He looked back and waited for a good wave , and when he saw one he got up on his board and road the wave all the way in . By the time he got to shore he was exhilarated . He felt powerful and brave . He smiled huge and gave a victory yell . He looked back to the ocean and decided to go back out . He paddled out again and this time instead of panic , at not being able to see the shore , he felt excitement . When a good wave came he got up on the board and started riding . Then he crashed . He had crashed many , many times , but this time was terrifying . He felt disoriented and couldn 't figure out which way was up for a second . He felt his ankle and pulled on the string . He got himself up on the surfboard and lay there for a second breathing hard . The next wave came , and he just stayed on his stomach letting the waves wash him towards shore . When he got to shore he got out and stood there thinking about what he had just done . He slowly walked over to his bag , and put his board down . He looked around again and didn 't see any people . He took off his wet suit , got dried off , and put his clothes on . He packed his stuff up , and headed back home . He got back into his room without anyone seeing . While Jay and Erica were out , a couple of girls came in the shop . They were about Bradin 's age . They smiled at him , and he went to help them . The man pointed to the cash register where there were three people waiting , and two of them looked exasperated with waiting . Bradin was a little embarrassed to realize he had forgotten he was the only one there , and he went over and helped the first person out while apologizing for the wait . The second person in line was pissed at having been kept waiting . She immediately said , " I want to speak with the manager . " " Well you should be . If I had known you were the one running the place I would have interrupted your little get together over there , and made you come help me . How old are you anyway ? Are you sure you 're legal to work ? " Bradin got angry . He said , " Look lady , I don 't know what your problem is . I said I was sorry for the wait , but I was helping a customer … . " The lady gave a huff and left . Bradin closed his eyes and thought that hadn 't gone very well . Bradin didn 't have any more problems , and by the time Jay was back , Bradin was feeling better again . Jay said , " Thanks for minding the store . Any problems ? " " Yeah . There was a lady who had to wait for like five minutes for me to help her , and she yelled at me . She was really mean . " Bradin smiled and waved goodbye as he headed out to the beach . Later that evening Ava and Nikki were cooking dinner , and Bradin was sitting on the couch watching TV with Derrick when Jay came home . Everyone said hello to Jay . Jay went and sat by Bradin . He said , " The lady did come back . " Jay shook his head . He figured the truth was someplace between the two stories , but he really didn 't think it was all that bad either way . He smiled and said , " Were they at least cute ? " " Well then it sounds like it was worth it to me . Just try not to let it happen next time . I always try to do my flirting by the cash register , just in case . " Bradin looked at Jay and gave him a smile . Jay patted his shoulder and went to talk to Ava and see what was for dinner . That night Bradin thought he would be able to sleep , but the lady 's words kept coming back to him about being old enough to work there . The mental answer that kept going through his head was , ' I 'm old enough to bury my parents , so I guess I 'm old enough to work here . ' He knew that the statement wasn 't really true , and didn 't make sense . Derrick had buried his parents too , and he wasn 't old enough to work , but Bradin wished he had said it just to wipe the mean look off the lady 's face . The more he tried to not think about it , the more he thought about his parents , until finally he had to get up and do something . He thought about surfing , and he thought it would get his adrenaline going , and that would help him to forget . He had rinsed out his wetsuit right after work , and now it was in his closet . He very quietly got it out of the closet , and went to get his surfboard that was by the pool house . He made it to the beach without anyone noticing . He looked out to the waves , and again felt them pulling him . He looked around and saw no one out on the beach . He got himself undressed by the log like he had the night before . He got on the wetsuit , and put on his leash . He picked up the board and got in the water . Jay had been asleep when he heard a knock at the pool house door . He stumbled out and opened it to see Erica on the other side . He could tell she had been crying and said , " What 's wrong ? " Jay nodded and went to get a shirt . They walked hand in hand to the beach , and Erica said , " It 's been eight years since the first time she left . Eight years ago today . " Erica nodded . She stopped them and hugged Jay and rested her head on his chest . He held onto her and said , " I 'm sorry she hurts you . I wish I could make it better for you . " They started walking back towards Jay 's house in a companionable silence . Then Erica pointed out to the ocean and said , " Oh my God . Do you see that ? Some idiot is actually surfing ! " Jay looked out to the water and could barely see a figure in the water . He said , " You want to go sit on the log and watch the moron ? Maybe tell him he needs to get some help when he gets out ? " Jay looked out to the ocean and saw that Bradin was up on the board and getting close to shore . He said , " He asked me about it too . Don 't feel bad about it . " Jay bent down and picked up the towel that was on the log . He turned to Erica and said , " I need to talk to Bradin alone . Will you wait for me in the pool house ? I should be there soon . " They kissed and Erica started back to the house . Halfway there she realized Jay had reminded her of her father . When he was looking out towards where Bradin was surfing he had that same look of disappointment and determination that her father had given her sometimes . She shook her head thinking about Jay being a father type . She would have never been able to picture it before tonight . Jay stood there thinking about what Bradin was doing . He thought about how everyone would be affected if Bradin died . Ava would never forgive herself . She would be so unhappy , she would turn into a shell of her former person . Derrick and Nikki would most likely be catatonic at loosing their big brother so soon after loosing both parents . Johnny would see it as a failure , and would probably leave to isolate himself from the pain . Susannah would be lost trying to help her friends , and then not being able to help would hurt her in a permanent way . The more Jay thought about it the more angry he got that Bradin was out there doing something he knew was dangerous and foolish . Bradin was up on his second wave , and was getting close to shore when he heard shouting . He looked to shore and saw someone jumping and waving at him . As he got closer he could tell it was Jay . He felt kind of sick to his stomach at the thought of Jay telling Ava or Johnny what he had been up to , and he was kind of pissed that he had gotten caught . It had been exhilarating again , and he was looking forward to doing it whenever he needed to . The wave was done , so he jumped off the board , and was able to touch his toes on the sand . He waved to Jay to let him know he had seen him and started swimming to shore . When Bradin got close enough to hear , Jay said , " Get your ass out of that water right now Bradin . " Bradin stood and walked slowly to the shore . Jay just stood there with his arms crossed waiting for him . Bradin walked up to him , and Jay handed him the towel . Jay started walking over to the log where the rest of Bradin 's stuff was . Bradin followed while drying off . Jay stopped at the log and turned to look at Bradin . He said , " Just what the hell did you think you were doing ? " Bradin had finished drying his hair , and had tossed the towel on the log . He was tired and still upset that his secret had been found out . He said , " Yeah . " Jay took a couple of deep breaths and thought about how wrong this was . He needed to make sure Bradin knew what he did was dangerous , and that he would not be allowed to do it ever again . He knew that Johnny had spanked him once , and at the time he didn 't want to have anything to do with it . But now that he saw Bradin was doing something deadly he was considering it . He said , " Get your wetsuit off and get dressed . I need to calm down . " Bradin thought Jay was being a little ridiculous , but he did change while Jay paced around thinking . Once Bradin was back into his tee shirt and sleep pants , he stuffed his wetsuit into the bag and said , " Okay I 'm done . Let 's go home . " Bradin rolled his eyes , but did sit down . Jay said , " I can not believe you are out here doing something so dangerous . How could you do that to your family ? " Bradin jumped up and said , " That 's right , I did it yesterday too . I was fine then , and I 'm fine now . I am perfectly capable of deciding what I can handle . " Jay shook his head with disbelief . He put a hand on Bradin 's shoulder and said , " You 're obviously not capable of deciding what you can handle since you were out there surfing at night like an idiot . Do you want to hurt yourself ? " Bradin started walking towards the house , but only got two steps before he felt a hand on his upper arm . He tried to shake it off again , but couldn 't . Jay was past the point of wondering if this was the right thing . Now he just wanted to make sure Bradin knew that they were family whether Bradin liked it or not , and that his family would not accept him hurting himself without a fight . Jay pulled a struggling Bradin over to the log . Jay sat down and pulled Bradin face down over his lap . Bradin never thought that Jay would spank him . Jay just seemed too easy going and laid back to do that . He said with panic , " Jay ? You don 't want to do this man . Let 's just go tell Aunt Ava about it , and let her deal with me . " Jay started spanking Bradin hard and fast . Bradin screeched and tried to get away . When Jay started he had his hand on Bradin 's back , but as Bradin started to flail , Jay had to wrap his arm around Bradin 's waste and pull him up against his stomach to keep him in place . Jay didn 't say anything while he spanked . Bradin was noisy , but most of what he said was incoherent . Jay caught a couple of ' please stops ' , and some ' I 'm sorrys ' . Jay didn 't stop until he heard less yelling , and more crying from Bradin . He stopped as suddenly as he started , and shook out his hand which hurt . Then he loosened his grip on Bradin 's waist and rubbed Bradin 's back for a few seconds . As soon as Bradin realized it was over , he pushed himself up and off Jay 's lap , and kneeled in the sand next to him because standing seemed too hard . Jay got down and sat in the sand with his back against the log . After a few seconds Jay said , " You better never try this crap again Bradin . " Bradin was still crying but nodded that he understood . Jay said , " Maybe you can 't see it , but you 're an essential part of our little family group . If something happened to you we would all be lost . How can you be out taking risks with your life when Nikki and Derrick need you ? How would they be able to go on with you gone along with your parents ? And the only thing that keeps Ava going since she lost her sister is the three of you . I don 't know if she would recover very well if she lost one of you guys too . Johnny wouldn 't be able to cope with the pain , and would probably have to leave . Susannah and I would both be so busy trying to help the others get through their pain that we would push ours aside . Then when we realized we couldn 't help , we would have to deal with that pain along with our own pain from loosing you . " Bradin shook his head no , but Jay pulled him down anyway . Once Bradin was lying down , Jay started rubbing soothing circles on his back as they both watched the waves Ten minutes later , Bradin was done crying , and he was just staring off into space thinking . Jay said , " What are you thinking about ? " Jay was surprised at that statement . He thought for a few seconds and said , " I kept picturing how everyone would look if you died . I wanted to make sure that I never really see it . " " And I know that you want to be able to make your own decisions , and I know you think you 're ready to be an adult , but your not . You still need all of us to help you make the right choices , and surfing at night was not the right choice . I still can 't believe you did it twice . " Bradin didn 't say anything . After a few minutes of silence Jay said , " We should get home . Erica is waiting for me , and you need to get some sleep . " Bradin pushed himself up , and Jay stood too . Bradin picked up his bag , and Jay picked up the surfboard for him and they headed back . Once they made it back to the house Jay set the surfboard against the pool house and pulled Bradin into a quick hug before he said , " I 'll see you in the morning , and we 'll talk to Ava , Johnny , and Susannah together . " |
Henry 's Point was bustling with tourists . They were walking on the board walk , trampling the beaches and paired to climb up into the inactive lighthouse . Every summer it was like this . The quiet little town on Lake Michigan became awash with the masses . They spent money in Mary 's Lighthouse Cafe and Annabel 's Antique Barn . They bought up ice cream and souvenirs . They fed the town , like a bear eating his summer away , in preparation for hibernation . It was not all positive though . Their clothing inadequately covered their often flabby bodies , as if they were in Florida , instead of a small Midwestern town . They snapped pictures of everything and trampled across lawns as if they had a right to do so . They treated locals like their personal servants and assumed that anything and everything was for sale . Henry 's Point was founded one hundred and twenty years ago by Henry Sallade . He was shipping magnet who funded the lighthouse 's construction . He brought in the businesses , built warehouses and affordable housing . His family ruled the town for nearly eight years , with different members taking turns as the mayor . The Sallades were gone now , as was the shipping industry , but the town remained . Fishing boats still came to its shores , giving the local economy a steady blood flow . In the summer the tourists made up for the short falls of life . On the edge of town , on a cliff overlooking Lake Michigan , stood The Rose Cottage . It was a quaint Victorian house that had once belonged to Henry 's Sallade 's youngest daughter . She had never been married , and had lived in it until she died . For years it stood vacant , until Edna and Darien Marsh bought it . The brother and sister had been in their thirties when they bought the house , but they were now in their fifties . Their intent was to open a bed and breakfast . They had repainted the outside a cheery rose color with white and baby blue accents . They had put stain glass windows into each of the two gables . The interior they had restored to its Victorian splendor . They had the wall lamps « Last Edit : September 12 , 2010 , 10 : 12 : 24 PM by MrDiamondBackJack » An old pickup truck slowed down at the base of the road leading up to the Rose Cottage . The truck 's color was a faint memory underneath the rust that ate away at its body . The old farmer waited just long enough for the young man to hop out of the back with his bag before pushing the gas pedal again . The cloud of dust made the young man cough and cover his face with his elbow until the dust cloud settled . Slinging his pack over his shoulder , he tramped up the hill . Somehow , when he was in town , he had managed to offend just about everyone . Lord knows how since he had been polite in his requests for shelter and food . Perhaps it was because he failed to mention that he was willing to pay for those things but that was water under the bridge . The old farmer who had just left had told the young man about the new bed and breakfast being opened up . Desperate for a quiet place to rest , he asked the farmer if he could take the young man there . That was how Arthur Westmoreland found himself trudging up the road to the Rose Cottage . Finally , the cottage came into view and not many minutes later , he was standing at the foot of the steps looking up at the couple who were most likely the owners . " Sir , Ma ' am , my name is Arthur Westmoreland , " Arthur began . " Do you have a spare room for a man down on his luck ? I can pay some but I would prefer to do some work around the place for you in exchange . " Darien watched as the young man exited Peter White 's old scrap heap of a truck and started trudging toward their porch . Damn old fool was sending another stray their way . Peter knew that his sister was a softy for strays and would most likely take the boy in . More than one lost dog and cat had ended up with them . It had only been a year since the death of their last lost stray , a scruffy little terrier Edna had named Frankie . He had just called it Fart Monster , because that was what the ugly little cuss was . Of course , he had taken the dog fishing with him , scratched his belly and let him sleep on his feet , but that was only because it wasn 't the critter 's fault that he was a stupid smelly little mutt . Edna stirred beside him , reaching a hand out to touch his arm , before he could respond to the young man . " Be nice Darien . It 's only Christian charity and Lord knows that the boy could use so food on his bones before he heads off again . There 's a lot of landscaping still to do and your not getting any younger . " Her eyes twinkled as she stared down at the young man . It had been awhile since she had a chance to care of someone and this was someone in need . OOC : Thank you for joining . We 'll have to see if anyone else joins . " Thank you , ma ' am . To be honest , you 'll find it very difficult to put meat on these bones , " Arthur said to the lady . " Please don 't be offended if I don 't gain any weight . Seems the only time I ever did was when I was strapped down to a hospital bed and forced fed for a solid week . " Arthur smiled slightly at the two older people . He wasn 't going to bless his luck just yet . Words meant nothing to him unless they were backed up with action . That was what his father had taught him the hard way . Slowly , he sat down on the top step and waited for his hosts to decide what to do first with him . Darien pushed his cap back and scratched his thick graying hair . " I suppose so . I 'll give you a catch mister . Bring your bag and come on up . I 'm sure Edna 's gonna want to settle and feed you , before I get any work out of ya . " He stared at the younger man with his weathered face , checking him over again , just to be sure . Edna got up , setting her cat on the porch floor , and opened the front door . She was beaming . " Well come along ! We 'll get you settled and away from Mr . Grumps over there . She waited for the young man to come up the stairs and follow her . In the distance a RV Camper coming down the road . She stared out at it and wondered if it was their paying guests . OOC : I put up an advertisement , so we will see if we get any more players . A young woman could be seen walking up the road to the cottage . Her pace was steady but leisurely , she was determined not to break a sweat . She apparently had missed a ride by only a few minutes and she was quite sure that she could have have appealed to the old man 's sensibilities but the locals had kept giving her the run around and no one else was willing to assist at the moment . She didn 't have time to wait for another person to take pity on her , she really needed to get some rest . She adjusted her clothing as she drew near to the cottage , keenly aware that her clothing was out of date . The woman at the counter in Annabel 's had told her that she looked to have shopped in a high falutin vintage store . She frowned . I like my lace and velvet , I don 't understand why they have fallen so out of fashion in these times . Ah well , she would have to make the best of it . She smoothed her blonde hair as she approached the porch . Her waist length braid was mostly still intact but a few wisps had broked free around her temple and she wanted to make a better first impression than she had back in town . She was fairly sure the older couple were the owners , was the young man related to them perhaps ? Or was he the reason she had just missed a ride ? She smiled softly at all three , not knowing specifically who to address . " Good day everyone " she said with a curtsey . " I was told back in town that I might find a room here " She looked each in the eyes in turn as she spoke . " Unfortunately , I do not have the right amount of currency to purchase goods here . I have very little of your good ole american u s dollars but I have have old and foreign currency being kept at the bank in town if you know of someone who could give a fair exchange ? " She shook her head . " The bank said they would keep my things safe but that they did not have the ability to exchange the coins . " Arthur followed the old woman up the stairs . He chuckled as he thought of all the bad horror shows that started like this . City folk come to a rural town , find a place to stay in an out of the way building and during the night someone begins killing them , one by one , in the most horrifying ways . That thought ran out as he got to the top landing . Smiling at his host , he went into the room she indicated and set his bag down . " Thank you , ma ' am , " he said softly . " If you don 't mind , I need to lay down for a bit . Being broke is tiring work . I 'll be happy to get to those chores in an hour , if that is alright with you . " Quote from : LadyMarisa on September 15 , 2010 , 06 : 34 : 50 AMA young woman could be seen walking up the road to the cottage . Her pace was steady but leisurely , she was determined not to break a sweat . She apparently had missed a ride by only a few minutes and she was quite sure that she could have have appealed to the old man 's sensibilities but the locals had kept giving her the run around and no one else was willing to assist at the moment . She didn 't have time to wait for another person to take pity on her , she really needed to get some rest . She adjusted her clothing as she drew near to the cottage , keenly aware that her clothing was out of date . The woman at the counter in Annabel 's had told her that she looked to have shopped in a high falutin vintage store . She frowned . I like my lace and velvet , I don 't understand why they have fallen so out of fashion in these times . Ah well , she would have to make the best of it . She smoothed her blonde hair as she approached the porch . Her waist length braid was mostly still intact but a few wisps had broked free around her temple and she wanted to make a better first impression than she had back in town . She was fairly sure the older couple were the owners , was the young man related to them perhaps ? Or was he the reason she had just missed a ride ? She smiled softly at all three , not knowing specifically who to address . " Good day everyone " she said with a curtsey . " I was told back in town that I might find a room here " She looked each in the eyes in turn as she spoke . " Unfortunately , I do not have the right amount of currency to purchase goods here . I have very little of your good ole american u s dollars but I have have old and foreign currency being kept at the bank in town if you know of someone who could give a fair exchange ? " She shook her head . " The bank said they would keep my things safe but that they did not have the ability to exchange the coins . " Darien peered at the young woman from under the bill of his cap . She spoke with some sort of accent , but he wasn 't sure « Last Edit : September 15 , 2010 , 10 : 50 : 04 PM by MrDiamondBackJack » Quote from : dragonsen on September 15 , 2010 , 09 : 26 : 06 AMArthur followed the old woman up the stairs . He chuckled as he thought of all the bad horror shows that started like this . City folk come to a rural town , find a place to stay in an out of the way building and during the night someone begins killing them , one by one , in the most horrifying ways . That thought ran out as he got to the top landing . Smiling at his host , he went into the room she indicated and set his bag down . " Thank you , ma ' am , " he said softly . " If you don 't mind , I need to lay down for a bit . Being broke is tiring work . I 'll be happy to get to those chores in an hour , if that is alright with you . " She lead the young man through a tidy oak paneled entry hall , into the front hall of the house . A rounded stairway snaked along one wall , ending in a landing that covered the length of the room . The walls of the hall were covered with a white and tan patterned wallpaper depicting hunting scenes . Three framed entry ways led off into the rest of the house . A gold framed painting hung on one wall . It was a portrait of a properly turn out woman of advancing years , dressed in the height of late Victorian fashion . Her face was lined and pinched , with stern brown eyes . " Well come through young man . What did you say your name was ? " The hostess paused in the hallway to let him admire it . She and her brother had spent a year lovingly restoring it . [ / color ] OOC : Things are picking up . Please excuse any errors in this and my last post . I wrote them on my mobile phone . I will edit any mistakes at a later time . She smiled softly at the dubious look he was giving her but at least he had not been curt with her from the start . That itself was promising . " Thank you , kind sir " She folded her skirt about her legs and perched herself on the edge of the chair . " I certainly don 't mean to impose on you and your sister . I can pay for my keep , if only I can find someone with the means and the proper character to exchange my old currency for what is used around here . " She thought perhaps if she engaged the man in conversation she might win him over . " Your establishment is verily the picture of loveliness , you and your sister must take pride in what you have built here , am I correct ? . " OOC - Sorry about missing her having invited the other character inside . Don 't know where my mind was this morning . Logged " Arthur Westmore , ma ' am , " he said softly . However , his gaze was not on her but the beautiful painting in the hall . He couldn 't stop staring at it . Unconsciously , he stepped forward until his hand was almost touching the canvas . His hand stopped just before he did damage to the painting . Finally his wandering had brought him someplace that would inspire his muse . With a gulp he stepped back and tucked his hands in his pockets . " Beautiful , simply beautiful , " Arthur breathed out . " What is the story behind this painting , if I may ask ? I hope you will forgive me if you find me just standing here at odd hours and for long lengths of time . I 'm a painter and I 've been looking for a place to stay while I paint . " Quote from : LadyMarisa on September 15 , 2010 , 04 : 10 : 20 PMShe smiled softly at the dubious look he was giving her but at least he had not been curt with her from the start . That itself was promising . " Thank you , kind sir " She folded her skirt about her legs and perched herself on the edge of the chair . " I certainly don 't mean to impose on you and your sister . I can pay for my keep , if only I can find someone with the means and the proper character to exchange my old currency for what is used around here . " She thought perhaps if she engaged the man in conversation she might win him over . " Your establishment is verily the picture of loveliness , you and your sister must take pride in what you have built here , am I correct ? . " OOC - Sorry about missing her having invited the other character inside . Don 't know where my mind was this morning . Darien smirked for a second . The girl sure talked pretty . " I 'm just the muscle hon . If you want to discuss vision and such , talk with my sis . She told me we was openin ' this place and that I was to old for fishin ' . Can 't say as she was wrong , but I miss bein ' out there . Sittin ' on land , starin ' at it ain 't nearly the same . " He leaned back in his chair , so he could see her from under the bill of his hat . Sure , he could have moved it back a bit , but he had his principles . " So where you from anyway ? Not here I guessin ' . " OOC : No worries , though I was not trying to keep characters apart . I am still working out what his " accent " would be , so bare with me if it shifts a bit over time . Quote from : dragonsen on September 15 , 2010 , 09 : 21 : 11 PM " Arthur Westmore , ma ' am , " he said softly . However , his gaze was not on her but the beautiful painting in the hall . He couldn 't stop staring at it . Unconsciously , he stepped forward until his hand was almost touching the canvas . His hand stopped just before he did damage to the painting . Finally his wandering had brought him someplace that would inspire his muse . With a gulp he stepped back and tucked his hands in his pockets . " Beautiful , simply beautiful , " Arthur breathed out . " What is the story behind this painting , if I may ask ? I hope you will forgive me if you find me just standing here at odd hours and for long lengths of time . I 'm a painter and I 've been looking for a place to stay while I paint . " " Well if your a painter , I do have some work you can do . We are still refurbishing the kitchen and the utility room and they will need a new coat of paint . " She patted his arm . " Now as to this painting , I 'm not sure I really know all that much . It was hanging in the front parlor when we bought the place twenty years ago . There 's some writing on the back says as its of Katherine Sallade . She was old Henry Sallade 's younger sister . They was the family that founded Henry 's Point you know . Everyone knows that she wasn 't right in the head , always visiting the lake shore in the middle of the night and meeting some mysterious man , who wasn 't even her husband ! With behavior like that , its know wonder that she was drowned . They told us that the house sat empty for twenty five years before we bought it too ! Every few years , they would air out the place and try to put it on the market , but no one wanted it on account of her ghost ! It 's haunted you know . That 's what made me think of using it for a bed and breakfast ! Six month ago there was a program on popular haunted inns , and here we were sitting on a haunted gold mine ! Arthur continued to stare at the painting as he listened to the old woman 's tale . He wasn 't paying a lot of attention but just enough so he wouldn 't appear rude . At the mention of ghosts though , he smiled a half smile . There was always an explanation , he thought to himself . Personally , he didn 't believe in ghosts and he highly doubted that his stay here was going to change that . As his hostess finish her story , he realized that he didn 't know her name yet . " An intriguing tale , to say the least , " he said courteously . " I must confess that I do not your name , ma ' am . Have you seen her ghost since you bought this house ? Any ideas on the man she was meeting ? Mysteries want to be solved and solving them helps me pass the time while my muse is absent . " Quote from : MrDiamondBackJack on September 15 , 2010 , 10 : 48 : 01 PMDarien smirked for a second . The girl sure talked pretty . " I 'm just the muscle hon . If you want to discuss vision and such , talk with my sis . She told me we was openin ' this place and that I was to old for fishin ' . Can 't say as she was wrong , but I miss bein ' out there . Sittin ' on land , starin ' at it ain 't nearly the same . " He leaned back in his chair , so he could see her from under the bill of his hat . Sure , he could have moved it back a bit , but he had his principles . " So where you from anyway ? Not here I guessin ' . " OOC : No worries , though I was not trying to keep characters apart . I am still working out what his " accent " would be , so bare with me if it shifts a bit over time . She nodded . " Please forgive my discourtesy . I am tired from my travels but that does not excuse my manners . " Morgayne O ' Shannon and I hail from Ireland , Kilkenny to be precise . " She moved slightly like she was about to offer he hand but as he was leaning back , she folded her hands in her lap . " Being the muscle behind something is nothing to sneeze at . Vision is important but it is naught but a dream without the skills to bring it forth . " She grinned . " The great castles did not build themselves . " Quote from : dragonsen on September 15 , 2010 , 11 : 29 : 16 PM " An intriguing tale , to say the least , " he said courteously . " I must confess that I do not your name , ma ' am . Have you seen her ghost since you bought this house ? Any ideas on the man she was meeting ? Mysteries want to be solved and solving them helps me pass the time while my muse is absent . " The woman put a hand to her mouth . " Oh were are my manners ! I 'm Miss Edna Marsh , but please call me Edna . " Despite being in her fifties , and probably thirty years the boy senior , she found herself blushing . You old fool , she thought . " There will be time for the telling over tea , young man , but I need to get back to my brother . I am afraid that he is not up to receiving our guests on his own ! " She gesture toward the entryway at the back of the hall . " Just go through there and turn right . There is a little room there which we are still working on a bit . I will knock when tea is served . " Quote from : LadyMarisa on September 15 , 2010 , 11 : 29 : 59 PMShe grinned . " The great castles did not build themselves . " He pulled his cap off , by the bill and started to scratch at his thick gray scalp . She sure talked pretty enough , like a school teacher or a librarian . " Ah , well I don 't know nothin ' ' bout that . I just do as I 'm told , sos she leave me be . " He was feeling out of his depth . He had almost said that there was nothing wrong with his vision , but it wouldn 't have been the gospel truth . He had his drug store reading glasses , for when he read the morning paper . " Well . There good fishin ' in that town you said your from , Kil . . . . The town . " Darien silently cursed his sister . She had told him all that he had to do was to greet the guests and then he could go back to his workshop . Here he was though , trying to talk with some pretty young gal from Kiltree . Arthur nodded at his host and reluctantly left the painting . He followed her directions and soon found the small room . It only took him moments to unpack . There was a small window so he spent some time just staring outside , not seeing anything but what his imagination inscribed in his thoughts . Shaking his head , he realized he needed some sleep . The bed wasn 't all that great but it sure beat the cold ground . The young man stretched out on the mattress and soon was asleep . Quote from : MrDiamondBackJack on September 17 , 2010 , 06 : 26 : 20 PMHe pulled his cap off , by the bill and started to scratch at his thick gray scalp . She sure talked pretty enough , like a school teacher or a librarian . " Ah , well I don 't know nothin ' ' bout that . I just do as I 'm told , sos she leave me be . " He was feeling out of his depth . He had almost said that there was nothing wrong with his vision , but it wouldn 't have been the gospel truth . He had his drug store reading glasses , for when he read the morning paper . " Well . There good fishin ' in that town you said your from , Kil . . . . The town . " Darien silently cursed his sister . She had told him all that he had to do was to greet the guests and then he could go back to his workshop . Here he was though , trying to talk with some pretty young gal from Kiltree . " Kilkenny . Yes , I 'd imagine so though I couldn 't say from personal experience . It 's not really considered a womanly calling so I never learned how . " She glanced away briefly . " If it 's not too forward of me , may I ask why you must cut back on your fishing ? It occurs to me that if your sister would prefer that you not do so alone , perhaps I could apprentice with you and help pay for my keep . " " Until such time as we find someone reputable to exchange my money of course . " She smiled at the seemingly bewildered man . " I do know how to clean a fish at the very least . " Quote from : LadyMarisa on September 18 , 2010 , 12 : 59 : 08 PM " I do know how to clean a fish at the very least . " " Well , I . . . " He was surprised that she knew how to clean a fish and wanted to go out fishing . It was an odd notion . There were a few women fishing these waters , but it was mostly a man 's work . Hell , most of it was done by big operations now , not little dinky boats like his . Still , the thought of sailing across the lake with a pretty little thing like her help some appeal . He already knew what his dear sister would say thought , as she often did . Sometimes he thought is name was Old Fool . " Well , I don 't rightly know . Let me think on it for awhile . " Soon his sister rescued him . - - - - - - - - Two hours later , Edna knocked loudly on their young handyman 's door . " Wake up ! Tea is being served in five minutes ! I made sloppy joes , because I know how you boys love to eat . " She had tea by herself , since her brother thought it was a silly affectation . She did fine with a tin of butter cookies . Still , her mother had been from London , and raised her to run a proper household . It didn 't matter where one was . One served tea at tea time . The Irish girl had been settled in a room as well and she had promised to take her to town in the morning , to visit her friend Luke Bauman . He collected all sorts of antiques and odds and ends . He would treat the girl well , especially if he knew that she was watching him . Luke had been sweet on her for years . He was a handsome enough man with his high cheek bones , cleft chin and twinkling blue eyes , but he was ten years older than her . For most of their lives she had been like a younger sister to the daft idiot , but a few years ago he had decided to get frisky on her . Men were so fickle and changing . In the parlor , Darien sitting uncomfortably an antique chair , with his cap removed . He had on his favorite gray sweater and a little black bow tie . His sister had insisted that he stick around for tea , for once , since he needed to get to know the lad if he was going to work for them . He had tried to tell « Last Edit : September 23 , 2010 , 10 : 12 : 22 PM by MrDiamondBackJack » Morgayne checked herself in the mirror one last time . A string of wooden beads spaced by dried flowers hunger over the top of the mirror . She had seen a girl wearing an outfit like this in town yesterday but she had long since lost her ability to accurately guess another persons age so she couldn 't be sure this was entirely appropriate . Ah well , she would be judged by their reactions . Thin leather sandals , a pair of " designer " blue jeans and a t - shirt relflecting some popular musical band whos name she couldn 't pronounce . She thought about leaving her hair unbound but it was too thick and long , it would not stay controlled . Pulled it back behind her head and clipped it with an ornamental piece , a fairy dragon clamping around the base of the ponytail . Morgayne thought she heard tea being called out down the hall but she wasn 't sure what these sloppy joes were . A new style of food she expected but she hoped it wouldn 't be difficult to figure out how to properly eat . Cautiously , she poked her head out into the hallway to see who was calling and to be sure she heard correctly . Edna 's knocking on the door still hadn 't roused the young man , but the young lady was up and around . " Hello dear ! Do come to the parlor for tea . A few more guests have arrived and I am sure they would welcome your company . " She gave the girl an a speculative look , from head to toe . " I did so like you other outfit dear , since it worked in with the time period we decorated in . You look young and healthy , but maybe tomorrow I could persuade you to change back . I was thinking about asking you to pose for a few pictures for our website ! " The Rose Cottage had been advertised on a few websites before , but her nephew Nathan had created a real website for them and was working on creating a virtual walk through . Arthur struggled out of his nap . He was more exhausted than usual so his sleep was deeper . The knocking woke him up but it took several minutes to be able to process the words that his hostess had said . Finally , he managed to get up and stumble to the door . As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes , he made his way down to the parlor . " I 'm sorry about being late , ma ' am , " he said as he took a seat . " I guess I was more tired than I thought . Mmmm , sloppy joes . I haven 't had any of those in a long time . " Belatedly , he looked around as he put three sloppy joes on his plate . There were some new faces so he figured he should introduce himself . " Good afternoon , " he told the others . " My name is Arthur Westmore . " Edna moved around the room like a butterfly , flitting from guest to guest , introducing them , and serving tea . Her introductions included lots of statements like " near and dear to my heart " and " would you like another lump with that deary " . Besides Arthur and Morgayne , there were three others . Sitting nearest Arthur was a massive man with mutton chop sideburns and a tattoo of a wolf , running across the side of his thick neck . His head was bald , except for his side burns and a soul patch . He wore an ill - fitting gray suit which was threatening to rip apart at the shoulder . He was named Mr . Thomas Bradock and was visiting for the weekend , while he took some photos of the light house for a new calendar he was working on . Beside him sat Mrs . Katherine Wright , who was also staying for the weekend . She was a rather short , somewhat rounded woman with pleasant dimples and librarian glasses . Her brown locks were pulled back into a simple pony tail . Her attire was a white summer dress with little pink flowers . It showed off her curves well , while hiding her faults . She looked like someone who usually smiled a lot , but she was not smiling now , and especially so at the last man , who was sitting next to Morgayne . This man was Roberto Garcia , her boyfriend of some two months . They had finally decided it was time to go away together , for a weekend , but things were not going well apparently . He was a rather thin , bookish man with a mop of curly black hair and skin the color of heavily creamed coffee . With his hair and rounded glasses , he rather looked like a famous wizard of literature , if he had been Latino . He was wearing a pair of cut of jeans , ratty high top sneakers and a brown t - shirt with a storm trooper helmet on it , with crossed bones beneath it . OOC : It is late , or I would write more . Sorry if they are not actually speaking yet . I am off on Saturday . On Friday night , I will write out the legend of the picture , which Arthur asked about , since I will have the time to work on it . Take care folks . Ringing the bell to her bicycle , the short young woman was racing her way up towards the Rose Cottage . The quaint Bed & Breakfast on the cliff was just opening today , here she was one of their few only employees . . . late . Though , she had good reason . Charlie was a strange girl , the town 's folk described her as unnaturally kind , sweet , and a little bit spacey . Yes , she had her quirks and luckily wasn 't completely ostracized for it . She was just always different , strange , weird , kooky . . . Any time anyone would talk about Charlie Banes a person could be astounded with the many different ways to say odd . Sometimes , the rumor mill started to speak ill of her . Talk of her speaking to no one or rooms becoming cold suddenly when she was near , but it was all just talk right ? What was the truth ? Ever since Charlie was small , she had always been different . She and her mother could do and see things others couldn 't , and it was prudent that they kept this to themselves . Ghosts always fascinated Charlie , some of her better childhood friends were among the dead . Her talents were seeing memories , ghosts , the future , and even the past . Ghosts were more her forte and took the least amount of effort , being able to hear and see , and be touched by the dead was not hard . . . What was hard was trying to ignore them . Seeing into the unseen like the future and past sometimes required a trigger , like an item that would be used or a person that was involved . She would never learn to control this and has long accepted it . Charlie stood at an out standing 5 foot flat , she was short with a bottom heavy hourglass figure . Long dark blonde hair hung past her back was usually tied away in a singular or two braids . Today was singular braid , made it easier to ride on her bike without it swooping every where . Her eyes were round and doey , beautiful and gentle in a soft gray color . The strange young woman had a heart shape face , nicely manicured eye brows , long thick lashes , and full lips . Bicycle helmet strapped securely around her head as she picked up hePrint |
No time , no time ! ! I really truly have been too busy to write lately . Which is unfortunate since I 've had some interesting stuff going on lately . Even when I do have a few minutes of down time , the last thing I want to do is sit down with a computer in my lap . Our laptop sucks . It 's four years old and we need an upgrade . The battery is shot , which means it has to be plugged in all the time . It overheats easily , which means we have to have a hard surface and a fan underneath at all times . It 's all just not worth using most of the time . ANYWAY . Biggest news of the moment : Aiden 's been using the potty ! Not exclusively , but he 's finally giving it a little more thought . He used to refuse to sit on it all the time . The only way we could get his butt to touch that seat \ was to bribe him with entertainment , such as stickers or books . But the second he got bored with that , he was off the pot . He never sat on it long enough to accidentally go potty in it . BUT THEN . Last week I think it was , Travis was giving him a bath . He kept saying he needed to change his diaper , which is his way of saying he needs a diaper on . Travis told him not to poop or pee in the tub and to sit on the potty if he needed to go . He finally panicked enough that he was willing to give it a go . A few minutes later and we had a teeny tiny poo in his potty ! ! Sadly , we didn 't get to make a big deal of it at the moment . Travis and I were both on the phone . Travis said yay , gave him a high five and told him to come tell me what he did . Aiden came out and told me went potty , but I assumed he 'd gone in the tub and Travis was in the middle of refilling it . So I just said , " Oh ya ? Get back in that bathroom silly boy . " Ugh . It really upsets me when I think about how I didn 't make a bigger deal of his moment . We put Aiden to bed and then went to the bathroom to clean up . Travis dumped the poop in the real toilet and I asked him if he had put the poop in that potty to to show him where it was supposed to go . He said , " No , Aiden pooped in the potty . " I was like WHA " I wanna sit on the pooooottttttyyyyYYY ! ! " " Okay fine . " It feels wrong to let him completely defy what I have asked him to do , but at this point I 'm willing to try anything . We try to get him on the potty as often as possible . When we get home from daycare , I take off his diaper and make an attempt to keep him off the furniture . He does okay . Nothing serious just yet , but we 're making progress . This past weekend , he woke up and decided he would go sit on the potty all by himself . He took off his own pants and diaper and peed first thing . It was probably the most amazing moment of my life recently . Its funny how things change when you become a parent . I 've never been so ecstatic to see excrement in a toilet . That Monday after Aiden first pooped in the potty , I think I told everyone I knew at work - even the graduate students who I 'm sure could care less about where my toddler puts his poop . I 'm trying not to get my hopes up too high , but it would be freakin ' fantastic if Aiden were potty trained soon after Mila is born . One set of diapers in the house is enough . I have read that regression is common in older siblings of newborns , so I am prepared for that possibility . I do have to say that potty training is my least favorite task of parenting thus far . I don 't think it 's an easy thing for any parent , but it doesn 't help that I have the Most Stubborn Child in the World . I used to be the Most Stubborn Child in the World . But at some point in my teen years , I realized there was no point . Why fight everything in life ? Things have gotten a lot easier since then . Until I gave birth to the new title holder , that is . Travis and I have picked up a new hobby . Puzzles ! I love it ! Problem is , it 's a little addicting . A couple friends have suggested Puzzlers Anonymous for treatment . HA . The puzzle I 'm working on in this photo is only our third one . The first one we did by ourselves ( 1000 pieces ) over the course of several days . The second one we did with Ariel and Robert in one night ( 1000 pieces ) . This one is going to take forever . It is basically a bunch of swirling colors . Close to impossible if you ask me . I don 't know why we started it . Because of course now that we 've started it , we can 't stop . With two hours of help from Ariel and Robert we only got the outer edge and a few random pieces together . It 's definitely slow moving . It 's amazing to me how two pregnancies can be so different . I am still surprised by my skin . I still have acne , but no more than I had before I was pregnant . With Aiden , it was worse than high school . I don 't think I lost a single hair out of my head during the last pregnancy . This time I shed as much as I normally do . Maybe not all of you are maternity experts . Woman routinely get extremely thick hair and nails during pregnancy , partially due to the hormones , partially due to the vitamins . I had that last time . This time , notsomuch . I do have a similar craving of cereal . I feel like a kid in a candy story going down the cereal aisle at the grocery store . I eat a bowl at bedtime almost every night . Sometimes two bowls , depending on the type of cereal . Funny thing is I am LOVING whole milk . The thickness used to gross me out , but now skim milk just seems like water to me . I 've heard people say that before , but never got it . Now I get it . I had a day of nausea last week . I got really freaked out , thinking it would mean the nausea was back . I think I may have just overworked and underfed myself . I haven 't had a problem with it since . I have been tired a lot lately , but that 's probably related to my lack of sleep . I get up frequently to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and I 've started having a little trouble falling to sleep . I used to be able to pass out the second my head hit the pillow . Now that it 's taking me longer than that , I have time to get worked up about it while I 'm laying there . It probably only takes me 20 - 30 minutes to actually fall asleep , mind you . Nothing outrageous . There isn 't much to tell at this point . Mila is VERY active . I know I 've mentioned that before . Aiden was active enough that I never worried about him , but this just seems hyperactive . I hope it 's not a sign of what 's to come . I have my glucose test in four weeks . That 's the one where you have to fast the night and morning before you go in . I 'm so not looking forward to that one . I didn 't faint last time , but I 'm making Travis take me nonetheless . I don 't want to risk fainting at the wheel on my ride to the doctor 's office . Again , I have little time , but I have lots to talk about . So just a quickie . Aiden has been getting up before 6 for the past couple of days and it reminds me so much of myself . When I was little if I woke up even a tiny bit , I would get up immediately . I didn 't want to miss anything . I don 't know if that 's what Aiden is thinking , but I can 't help but think of myself when I was little . I did sleep in when I was a teenager . Though if family was in town or if it was a holiday , I was up at the break of dawn . Travis gets so annoyed with him . I do get a little frustrated he 's up before my alarm some days , but at the same time , I know this won 't last forever . He won 't always want to get up and lay in mom and dad 's bed for a few minutes before the day gets moving . And the fact that we 're so much alike gives me a bit of a soft spot as well . I sure hope Mila is a daddy 's girl so he can get a taste of this . Doing things without Aiden are becoming increasingly difficult . I 'm not exactly sure why it 's any different than it was a year ago . Maybe because we used to do more stuff in Galveston and that 's where our babysitters are ? Not sure . So when I had TWO nights in a row without Aiden this weekend , I started to feel pretty guilty . Saturday night , Travis and Aiden went to a monster truck show with Chris and Blair . They left before 5 and didn 't get home until almost midnight , I believe . I was ecstatic to learn Aiden chose to wear the ear protection courtesy of the Ramby 's . Travis has a pair of adult ear muffs , but they are as big as Aiden 's head . No wonder he was willing to wear these , but always refuses ours . We might need to invest in a pair before the next loud activity . It sounds like Aiden had a blast . Travis probably had as much fun as he did . He came home with tons of photos and videos on his phone . When I asked Aiden what he like the best about the show , he said the Spiderman truck ( of course ) and the popcorn . I don 't ever let him have popcorn because I 'm irrationally terrified he will choke on it . Meh . The next day , Aiden spent a good portion of the day driving his monster truck toys all over the place . He has the Gravedigger monster truck , which I didn 't realize was an actual truck . Gravedigger was at the show , so that worked out ! Travis showed him how to run over his other matchbox cars with the monster trucks . Oh boys . I , on the other hand , suddenly had a free evening and wasn 't sure what to do with myself . I decided I wanted to do something I can 't normally do when I have Aiden . I ended up going to see a movie with a bunch of girls from work . We saw the second Sherlock Holmes movie at one of those theaters where they serve you dinner and drinks at the same time as the film . None of them had ever been to a theater like that , so it was a lot of fun . A bunch of us got a Groupon that included one ticket and a large popcorn for $ 5 . GREAT deal . I shared my popcorn with a girl who didn 't get a Groupon because a large popcorn is entirely too much for me . It would be perfect for Travis and I . My friend and I barely made a dent . Granted , we also ate other food . I got bruschetta and she got cupcakes . After the movie , everyone came back to my house and we chatted for an hour before they continued on the road back to the island . I had a really good time . I only went to the bathroom three times while we were there . HA . One of those times , I saw a man walk into the men 's room carrying a mug of beer . I decided he must not have wanted to leave his drink unattended . You know , roofies and all that . At the end of the movie , the servers brought out the bills for everyone . An elderly woman in the row in front of us whipped out a lighter so she could read and pay her bill . I don 't know why , but that seemed so absolutely outrageous to me . Did she not have a cell phone to light her way ? Perhaps it didn 't cross her mind ? Or was the first thing she thought of her tinderbox ? Before Travis made plans to go to Monster Jam , I had arranged for him to keep Aiden Sunday night while I went to a friend 's house for a birthday dinner . We had Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr Day , so we opted to celebrate on a Sunday night . Our plans were quite dorky , so try not to judge too much . We all brought food and planned to watch Aladdin . Aladdin was one of my VHS tapes from when I was a kid . My mom brought an entire box of Disney VHS tapes on her road trip this Christmas . I finally convinced Travis to figure out how to plug in the VHS player we 've been keeping around for just such an occasion . Travis was always asking if he could throw out that thing . My response ? " But what if we need it ? ! " So glad we kept it . Sadly , things didn 't work out exactly as we had planned . My friend 's cassette player ate my Aladdin tape . It didn 't tear the tape , so we winded it back up . I haven 't had a chance to play it to make sure everything is all right . Hopefully all is well . It was pretty funny though because I couldn 't tell you the last time I had to wind up a destroyed cassette . Good times . Since everyone had Disney on the brain , we opted to watch another Disney movie : Lilo and Stitch . I have watched a good portion of that movie several times recently because that was another movie in the box from my mom . Aiden really likes that one . Dinner was great , and I wasn 't home too late . There 's a little more fun left in my weekend to share , but I 'll save that for later . Posted by This morning Travis was telling Aiden bye before leaving for work . He was giving him a hug when Aiden says something muffled into his shoulder . Travis pulls back and asks him to repeat himself . I don 't know why , but that was just the sweetest thing ! I teared up while I was getting ready in the bathroom . Travis said he was VERY welcome and said love you . He has also started asking to see Mila a lot lately . I 'm not sure if he wants to go back to the doctor for an ultrasound or if he understands that she is going to come out into the real world eventually and he would like to meet her . Either way , I love that he is interested in her . I am having a little trouble figuring out my hunger these days . It seems like for the past week my stomach has been a bottomless pit in the morning . I eat cereal , then 15 minutes later I 'm still hungry . I eat a piece of fruit and 15 minutes later I 'm still hungry . I eat trail mix and FINALLY , I 'm satiated . I have a snack ( usually yogurt ) at 10 am , then lunch at noon . Then I start to get hungry again between 3 and 5 . So I have some more trail mix or a protein bar . Yesterday I was starving so I couldn 't stop eating trail mix . By the time I got home and reheated some leftovers for dinner , I wasn 't hungry . I ended up not eating until 9 pm . I 've noticed that Mila gets an energy boost about 30 minutes after I eat , so starting around 9 : 30 or 9 : 40 she went nuts . Right around the time I was laying down for the night . Gah . It 's annoying when things don 't go exactly the way I 'd like them . Yes , I know that 's life . But it doesn 't stop me from feeling a little off . Aiden has been waking up really early lately . I don 't know why . We haven 't changed his nap time or bed time . This morning he came out of his bedroom one second after my alarm went off , which meant he was already awake in his room . I hit snooze and stayed in bed . Aiden silently walked around to my side of the bed . When I didn 't react to his presence , he went out to the living room and turned on the light ( he climbs up on the couch to reach the switch ) . He played for a few minutes but came back when my alarm went off the second time . I asked him what he was doing awake already and he ran away whining , " Nooooo . . . . " I think he thought I was going to make him go back to bed . You see , that 's what I do when he wakes up before the sun is up on weekends or before my alarm has gone off during the week . I just let him run off to the living room while I forced myself out of bed . I 've been pretty exhausted this week . We 've stayed up late every night for one reason or another - Curt 's in town , the puzzle is all too addicting ( we finished it by the way ) , I can 't put an e - book down . I 've gone to bed between 11 and 12 for four nights in a row now . It 's not a habit I should keep . I usually go to bed by 10 . But in order to get eight hours of sleep I need to be asleep by 9 : 45 . To top off this exhaustion is the fact that I 'm limited on the amount of caffeine I can have . My doctor said one cup of coffee a day is fine . But I feel guilty whenever I have caffeine . For some reason , I feel like Mila is a lot more active than Aiden ever was . She 's always flitting away in there . But when I have caffeine she goes NUTS . Almost to the point where it annoys me . Plus I feel bad that I 'm forcing her to take a drug she didn 't ask for . I dunno . For all I know , she 's loving the energy , doing log rolls all around her live - in swimming pool . The nice thing about the coffee is it helps keep me regular , if you know what I mean . I haven 't had nausea in a while , so I haven 't needed the Zofran . That means one less thing causing constipation . I 'm still taking stool softeners , probiotics and eating a prune or dried apricot everyday . Plus , doc told me to drink three LITERS of water a day . I don 't always get the full three , but that combination has kept me pretty regular and I 'm loving it . There are days when I 'm BM free . Those days I contemplate a cup of coffee just to keep things moving . So I guess I 'm going to sit here for another hour or so feeling guilty about how badly I want that cup of joe until I actually go get my fill . On a side note , did you know that coffee is sometimes referred to as Java because back in the day , the sole exporter of coffee was the island of Java ? And one theory for the term ' cup of joe ' is because the soldiers used to stay warm in the trenches with a metal mug of hot coffee . GI Joe 's drinking a cup of joe . Posted by Sorry I haven 't been good about posting lately . I 'm a little addicted to my new iPhone ( Christmas gift from Travis ) , which means I 've been reading and playing games more than thinking about what I can write on here . Seriously , that thing is taking over my life . I need the awesomeness to wear off a little so I can pay more attention to my life . Travis ' dad Curt came into town last night . He 's a trucker and needed to take a break from the road , so he is taking it at our house . He took us up to his truck last night so Aiden could see it up close . Sadly , he was too afraid to go in the cab . I stood in the door with him in my arms , but he was still freaked out by it . So we got out and inspected the exterior of the giant vehicle up close . Aiden loved that part . Travis , Curt and I were lost in conversation at one point and I could tell Aiden was getting bored because he kept trying to talk to me . To distract him , I handed him a rock and told him to go throw it in a giant puddle near where we were standing . He just thought that was an amazing thing . Kept him busy long past the end of our conversation . Finally , we had to pry him and his muddy hands away from the water to go home for dinner . Travis grilled out beef for fajitas that night . We had made plans to do this the day before and had no idea there was a 100 % chance of thunderstorms for the majority of the day . I think we were lucky the rain stopped for us to make dinner ! The flooding was horrible , but thankfully no tornadoes hit our house . We stayed up late for the second night in a row . The night before we spent 5 hours putting together a 1000 - piece puzzle - our newfound common interest ! I am so excited about this ! Something for us to do together . After discussing it on Facebook , I found that LOTS of people do puzzles . The good thing about this is that means we can trade puzzles ! Free of charge . It 's like my very own library of puzzles . We still haven 't finished this puzzle because Curt was in town last night , but we probably have an hour or two left on it . I look forward to the challenge WITH my husband along for the ride . We pulled into the driveway after grocery shopping to see Travis ' truck parked in the driveway . Aiden yelled , " Daddy ! " Then he saw his pirate ship and yelled , " Pirate ship ! " Last September when we went to Illinois for my cousin 's wedding , my dad gave Aiden a toy monkey that is dressed like a pirate . It has a button on it 's hand that when pushed , makes monkey sounds . It was a Halloween decoration that he thought Aiden would love . He was right . I am just so impressed that he remembers who gave it to him . I 'm hoping this means he got Travis ' memory because we know mine sucks it . The only reason I can recall things is because Travis reminds me , or I go back and check this blog . The other thing I 've been really impressed with lately is Aiden 's ability to name colors . When I used to ask him what color something was , he would answer ' blue ' 75 % of the time . Occasionally he got it right , but I was never sure if it was luck or true memory . But I have noticed for the past couple weeks that he has consistently gotten colors correct . He never seems to remember pink and purple , but I am still blown away at his good record as of late . They must be focusing on colors at daycare . This past Sunday we made plans to meet the Yeager 's at the park . I really wanted to get Aiden out of the house and I was feeling a little guilty that he hadn 't had much of a chance to play with friends over my break . I think he appreciated the afternoon out with Luke , even if it was a bit chilly ( for Texas ) . After feeding the non - existent turtles in the pond ( I 'm pretty sure they were staying warm at the bottom of the water ) , we decided to go out for dinner . We just happened to be near a Cracker Barrel , which I haven 't been to in years . Decades maybe . I know it was while I was still in high school , could have been before that . The only time I 've ever been was with my friend 's family for breakfast after I stayed the night at her house . I 'm pretty sure the last time I stayed the night at her house was Freshman year of high school . I 'd never been for dinner . Of course , I had to reminisce with breakfast for dinner . I 'm a little ashamed to say I ate half of my plate and half of Aiden 's . Those grits really hit the spot ! Aiden 's favorite meal is breakfast , so we ordered pancakes and bacon for him . He went to town . I had all last week off , along with yesterday . I had a lot of time with Aiden since I only brought him to daycare one day last week . It was a nice day . I dropped Aiden off and then headed to Ariel 's where Alex had stayed the night . We dropped Ariel off at work and then headed out for lunch . He wanted Vietnamese food since we 've got a few good Pho places on the island . We went to one I hadn 't been too before , so it was an experience for me as well . He was a gentlemen and bought my lunch ! Unexpected , but appreciated . After lunch we went for a walk on the beach . Alex really wanted to make it to the ocean before he left for Illinois again . When we couldn 't bear the wind anymore , we headed up to Ariel 's bar . She took a break and walked the Strand . We got coffee , walked over to the harbor for a bit and went in a few stores . We picked out our dad 's Christmas gifts together . We got him some Texas gear since he wasn 't able to make it here for the holidays this year . I really missed having him around , but hopefully that means it will be easier for him to visit in May when Mila is due . Aiden got some Christmas cards in the mail that included money ( thank you Grandpa Curt , Grandma Brenda and Great Grandparents Richard and Jan ! ! ) , so we decided to put it all together to get an outdoor playset for Aiden . It 's good up to 6 years old , so we have many years ahead of us with that toy ( assuming it holds up ) . Little Tikes is good about putting a pamphlet inside all their toys to advertise other stuff they make . Sells me everytime . Now I want to get him the water play pirate ship this summer . Perhaps as a birthday present ? We went outside to show Aiden his new gift for the first time New Year 's day . Travis attempted to get our Christmas present to ourselves working , but it was too windy . I look forward to a few evenings sitting at that fire with a beer . Of course , that won 't happen until this summer , but the time is near ! I got a little nervous a few times because MAN that kid is ballsy . Aiden just would not go down that slide on his own , so Travis got on to show him how it 's done . Aiden thought it was a hoot racing Travis around to the steps over and over . It will be GREAT whenever he has buddies over to play with him . Posted by Christmas came and went in a whirlwind ! I can 't even remember everything we did while my family was here . Here 's what I can recall : Saturday morning ( Christmas Eve ) , Travis , Aiden and I went over to Ariel and Robert 's house for lunch . We went a little early so Aiden could nap there and I could cook . We ate a lot and then hung out for a few hours . That evening , Ariel and Robert had to go into work . Bummer , but they gotta make that paycheck . The next morning , Aiden woke up to a couple gifts from Santa and a full stocking . Santa got him a camera and a Dinosaur Train car and dino - shark . He played with that for a while and we helped him go through his stocking gifts . He also got to eat some candy before lunch . Around 10 , we let him open some more gifts to play with that day . He opened the Dinosaur Train tracks from Grandma Brenda and a Tag Junior from us . We wanted to wait to open his gifts when everyone was around , so we kept postponing opening up the remaining gifts . He loves the Dinosaur Train tracks , but I they fall apart too easily . They are recommended for 3 years old and above , so he 's not that good at putting the track together himself . I may have to hide the tracks and keep the cars out for a while so I don 't lose my sanity . It 's frustrating when he needs it put back together every 10 minutes . That evening , Ariel and Robert came over for dinner . My mom and I made a beef tenderloin . It was my first time to ever make one , so it was interesting . We overcooked it a little bit , but it was a learning experience . Dinner was great , and as you can see , we were not able to get those Spiderman PJ 's off Aiden the entire day . After dinner we let Aiden open his remaining gifts . We put together his new grill right before bed , which in hindsight , was not the best idea . Getting him down for nap that day and for bed that evening was a trying experience . He just wanted to play with all his new toys ! I also tried a new idea for displaying Christmas cards this year . Linsey saw the idea online and I thought it was really cute . My bow was a little sad though . Next year I 'll have to look harder for a better ribbon since this one was a bit droopy . Tonight we went to dinner at Cracker Barrel with the Yeager 's . When the server first came to the table he asked the boys how old they are . They both stared at him blankly . Aiden is usually shy with people at first so I didn 't expect him to answer . I gave him a chance but eventually answered for them . When the server came back with our drinks , Aiden held up two fingers and extended his arm to the server . I couldn 't believe he remembered and was interested enough to answer him later . I was so impressed ! Funny thing is Aiden usually holds up two fingers and says , " one " . We didn 't get the verbal this time , although I waited for it . Posted by I grew up in central Illinois , but moved south of Houston , Texas in 2002 . I live with my husband Travis , son Aiden and daughter Mila in our first home . Most of our time is spent doing things as a family and I love it ! I also live with two cats and some fish . I work as a safety specialist at a research hospital and hope to make it my career . Feel free to leave a comment and let me know you stopped by . |
We had a pretty good day . For one , it is almost the end of June , which means we are [ ] this much closer to the end of this deployment ! ! ! ! ! Also the kids went to preschool today , it was nice to have some time to myself , even if I spent most of that time running errands . I swear , when the kids are at preschool , I am not just sitting on my behind , I am generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything done . Little L sure does love preschool and so does Baby E . They are so good with them ! ! ! Little L went potty at preschool again ! He is getting sooo good at telling everyone when he needs to go pee pee . We just have to work on him pooping on the potty . He also stayed dry when we ran a few errands tonight . I was very proud of him ! I was also able to go to lunch with my mom today . It was so nice going just the two of us . We don 't get to do it very often , so it was really nice and relaxing . On another note I got a call from preschool saying Baby E had a low grade fever , which is par for the course with having shots yesterday . Tonight I found another reason for her fever , her first tooth poked through ! ! ! ! I can 't believe our little girl has her first tooth ! I can 't believe she is old enough to have teeth yet . What a great way to end the week . TGIF This past weekend was quite the weekend . I am so glad it is over . From checking into the hospital on Friday to the Tropical Storm Debby , it has been eventful . . . . . and not necessarily in a good way . I was pretty impressed by our room . We had a 46 " TV that showed movies as well as normal TV . You were also able to see the room service menu as well as request housekeeping items or to have your room temperature changed . There was a mini fridge , and a couch that pulled out for me to sleep on . It was not the most comfortable thing in the world . They offered room service for patients as well as for their guests . Dinner was $ 6 and you got an entree , two sides , a bread , dessert and a drink . I was pretty impressed with their food . Although I was not impressed with the dirt cake : ( It didn 't taste like what I remembered . I know it wasn 't the most healthy thing I could have picked , but I felt I needed some comfort food at this point . After all of the blood work and such we went down to radiology and did a swallow study , they wanted to see if she was aspirating when she was drinking her bottle . The conculsion they came to was that we need to thicken her formula to prevent her from aspirating when drinking . The doctor calls it dysphagia . At this point we didn 't have an answer to our puzzle . We continued with the breathing treatments , every three hours throughout the night . Saturday morning the doctor was impressed at how good she sounded . The wheezing was pretty much gone . They spaced the breathing treatments to every 4 hours . Baby E did not like them , she screamed through every . single . one . of . them . You would think we were seriously hurting her with the way she was screaming . It brought me nearly to tears every time . Our little girl , sleeping Also that morning I woke up to pink eye again ! Ugh ! ! ! ! ! Can I not catch a break ? Thankfully my mom brought my medicine from the last time I had it . Thank goodness ! ! ! That afternoon my mom brought Little L to visit . It was nice having someone else hold Baby E . She can get quite heavy after awhile . It was also nice to have someone else to talk to other than the nurses . They stayed for a couple hours , then it was time to get Little L down for a nap . A little after they left my biffle came to visit . We hung out and ordered dinner . It was nice having so many visitors . It gets lonely hanging out with just your baby . I have to say , our night nurse Kelsey was the best ! She stopped and chatted with me for awhile . She also was really quiet every time she came in the room . Saturday night is also when they named the lovely tropical storm that is reeking havoc on our state . . . . Debby . I wasn 't too worried about this tropical storm . One because I was in a huge hospital and two it was just a tropical storm and the worst of it looked to be going north of us . Sunday morning they put the pH probe in . Oh my goodness ! I felt so horrible for her . She screamed like I have never heard her scream before . It was horrible listening to her . She had to keep this thing in for at least 18 hours . I had to make sure I didn 't pull on it while holding her and I had to carry around the monitor everywhere . It was a pain . This also marked the second day that she would not take a nap in the crib . It made for a VERY . LONG . DAY . I was able to watch some Army Wives ( earlier seasons ) on Netflix . I 've been wanting to re - watch the episodes from the beginning . Sunday night after I finally got Baby E to bed I ran downstairs to get some dinner . I was able to talk to M for a little bit that night which was something I desperately needed . I still think it 's amazing how he can make me feel better , even being so far away . I am one lucky girl . Finally Monday morning she got the pH probe out . We also had to do a sweat test to check for cystic fibrosis . At 2pm , they finally released us . The allergy test came back negative , the sweat test came back negative and the pH probe showed a little acid reflux . The diagnosis is : she has a little acid reflux , a little dysphagia and a little asthma . The drive home on Monday sucked today . The wind kept blowing my car all over the place , plus the bridge home was close so we had to go around , which added at least 30 minutes to our drive . It was great finally getting home . Well , that was my weekend . I am soooo glad to be out of the hospital . Baby E is still wheezing on and off , but she is doing much better . Little L is happy to have us home . I am so thankful to my mom and to M . My mom helped out with watching Little L and M was there for me with his support when I needed it most . Posted by 1 . Little L LOVES his new preschool ! ! ! ! ! I am sooo happy ! The very first day the director introduced him to the other kids , he went over to them said hi , gave me a kiss , said " bye mama " and was off and running . He didn 't care I was leaving . It kind of breaks my heart , but I know it 's better that he isn 't screaming when I leave him . He really loves playing with other kids and is so outgoing . I think he gets that from his daddy . He certainly didn 't get it from me . 2 . On the potty training front we are doing pretty good . He can wear his cars underpants around the house and more often than not he makes it to the potty in time . Of course sometimes he makes himself go so he can have an M & M : ) He has even been able to go at my mom 's house which is awesome . Now we need to work on him going at Preschool ( which I know they will work with him on ) and get him to go in public . But I am pretty proud of him so far . Every time he goes potty he says " me make mama happy " it 's too cute ! He also got to call daddy the other day and tell him he went potty . He was so very excited . He took the phone from me and started walking around the living room talking to daddy . It was too cute . 3 . Speaking of my amazing husband . I swear it just amazes me that an email , a skype conversation , a facebook post or a phone call can make any day that much better . We are finally winding down this dang deployment and kicking its butt ! He truly is an amazing guy and he is my rock . His strength and his love is what keeps me going even through the tough days , and helps me find the strength within my self to get done what needs to be done . I cannot wait for the day when I can be in his arms again . 4 . Our sweet baby E . . . . . . oh geeze . Well I have to say she is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen . We are still dealing with her wheezing . Now she has another ear infection . : ( It seems any time Little L gets a cold , she gets an ear infection . We went and saw the pulmonologist today . What they want to do , because no one has any idea what is going on , is to admit her to All Children 's Hospital tomorrow . They will then do a swallow test to make sure she isn 't getting formula into her lungs , then we will start ruling out other causes and see if we can find the reason for her wheezing . Thankfully my mother will be watching Little L for us and I will be able to stay at the hospital with Baby E . I am just hoping that they can figure this out quickly . I would rather not stay in the hospital very long , but I will do what needs to be done for our little girl to be better . We are just soooo ready for her to be healthy again . I think she has been to more doctors in her 6 months of life than my husband and I have been combined . It just makes me so sad to think of what she must be going through . I just wish I could take whatever it is away and make her better without having to go to the hospital , but I just can 't . We 've tried everything else . I get stressed out and I need to remember to be calm so that I don 't stress the kids out . I have reminded Little L that Grandma will pick him up tomorrow , but that as soon as we are done with Baby E 's doctors I will be back to get him . I hope he understand , I think he does . He is getting a Kathryn B So our little girl is now 6 months old . ( She actually became 6 months on the 15th , but who 's counting ? ) I sure cannot believe she is already 6 months old ! ! ! ! Time sure is flying by , thank goodness . We haven 't had her 6 month check up but I know that she is 20lbs . We have had a lot of doctor appointments for her due to her wheezing . She hasn 't stopped wheezing yet and they still are unsure of what it is . However , we are leaning a little more towards asthma . We had to run to the doctors yesterday because she had what I thought was a rash , but the pediatrician says it 's eczema . I guess eczema and asthma go hand in hand . I also wonder if she has allergies . So we will explore those options . We have a check up with a pulmonologist on Thursday . I just want to figure out what is wrong with her . I just want her to be healthy . Also during our doctor visit yesterday we found out Baby E has a double ear infection and cannot wear pampers diapers anymore . : ( Poor thing . But even through all of this and all of the doctors appointments , our little girl is generally always happy . She loves to smile and laugh and she loves to watch her big brother play . If her big brother gives her attention , no one else matters . Her attention is all on him . It 's too cute ! She is rolling around everywhere . If she wants to get somewhere she will roll or kick her feet to get there . She is working on sitting up on her own . I know if she could crawl she would be gone . She wants to move so bad . She loves spending time on the floor or in her jumper . She is just a very happy baby and we couldn 't be luckier . Posted by First off let me say Happy Father 's Day to all of the dads and soon to be dads out there . I have a pretty great dad , if I do say so myself . We haven 't always been close . Growing up I don 't remember him doing much with me . I was a girly girl and I don 't think he quite knew what to do with me . He went to I think one rollerskating competition with me ( and I competed for about 6 years ) and generally I just remember him being around when I was a kid . He only did stuff with me when my mom wasn 't able to . My parents separated when I was 14 , I started spending every Saturday with my dad . It was hard at the beginning , I blamed him for the destruction of our family . Over the years , and mainly thanks to my husband , I have been able to forgive my dad for what I believed was to be his fault ( even though I don 't know for sure ) . I think since I went off to college our relationship has grown . I spent more time with him , especially once my mom moved to Florida . My dad became my rock and my safe place in Michigan . I think our relationship has grown even more since I 've moved . I think we butted heads when I was in high school , one because I blamed him and two because we are quite a bit alike . But he is and will always be my daddy . I love him with all of my heart and cannot imagine my life without him . He has been soooo supportive since M left for the sandbox . He has come to visit me on almost every break I had from school to help out with the kids and to visit . It has been great . He is great with the kids and I enjoy spending time with him . The other great thing about him is he gets along GREAT with M ! M and the kids during R & R That brings me to the other great dad in my life . My husband . He truly is an amazing father . I might be biased but I don 't think I could have asked for a better father for my children . He loves our kids like every father should . He just is an amazing father and our kids love him so much . I know they cannot wait to be reunited with M again and have their daddy home . Today was a good day . . . . thank goodness . First my mom left today for her trip , so we went and had breakfast with her . The kids were really well behaved . Little L ate ALL of his food . I also got a call from M , it always makes my day to hear his voice . My pink eye is getting better , thank goodness and hopefully I will be all cleared up by Friday . Also , my aunt and uncle sent Little L gift cards for his birthday , so I decided to buy Little L a puzzle . He is obsessed with puzzles lately . He will sit for a long time on the floor and put them together . He has gotten very good at these and can pretty much put his puzzles together on his own . He of course wants you to do them with him , so he will ask for help every time . Today his puzzle came in the mail ! He and I were super excited . It 's a box that holds 4 different puzzles , plus the top you can use to put the puzzle together on . How cool is that ? ! ? ! ? It 's really fun to watch him put these together . I 've taught him to match the colors up and he does a really good job . I 'm proud of him . On another note , we 've started potty training . I know some of you are thinking we are doing this a little late , but generally most boys don 't start potty training until they are 3 . I also needed to wait until summer started because I just couldn 't do it on my own with work and everything else . We started on Monday morning . Let 's just say he was not a happy camper when I told him we were going to start going potty on the big boy potty . He hasn 't shown very much interest in this yet , but I figured it 's now or never . Monday after breakfast we started , I put him in his Cars underwear and told him he needed to keep McQueen dry . We did the every 10 minutes go sit on the potty for 5 minutes and repeat . I would reward him with M & Ms when he was still dry . That got old quick , but we kept doing it . He didn 't like sitting on the normal potty so I brought out the training potty that is shaped like a truck and when you pee in it , it sounds like a truck is starting up then backing up . I thought it was pretty cool , especially for a boy who loves trucks . We put the potty right in the living room . We ended up having two accidents . I was getting frustrated and was starting to think he would never get potty trained . I decided then to go get a cupcake and eat it ( I needed a little pick me up ) , well Little L saw me and asked for one of his own . I told him , nope not until you pee in the potty . Guess what the little bugger did ? ? ? Yup he went right over to the potty , pulled his undies down and peed in the potty ! ! ! ! ! Holy cow ! ! ! ! I couldn 't believe it . He got his cupcake and of course ate it . He then decided he needed to go potty again so he went right over and did it again . He then asked to call daddy , so we called him and Little L told him he went pee pee in the potty . It was soooo cute ! Watching him walk around the living room with my phone telling daddy his big news with a huge grin on his face , it just melted my heart . He ended up going about 4 different times that day . Then it was nap time and I put a pull up on him . After nap we haThen yesterday we tried it again after breakfast . He of course didn 't want to do it again . We had two accidents and then success ! He kept dry until it was nap time again . I am pretty proud of our little guy . This morning after our breakfast out I was met with resistance when I told him we were using big boy undies again . I reminded him we needed to keep McQueen dry and that if he needed to go pee pee that he needed to do it in the potty not on the floor . He played for a little bit then decided to go sit on the potty . . . . . success ! ! ! He asked to call dada again , so we did and he told him again how he went pee pee in the potty . I 'm sure M loves being interrupted at work to hear all of this , but it sure does make Little L 's day to tell daddy his big news . I am happy to say we had no accidents today . We also went back to big boy undies after nap and continued to stay dry . After the call to daddy he wanted M & Ms as his reward . . . . . . this reward almost backfired on me . I was doing dishes and Little L literally came into the kitchen about every two minutes to tell me he had to pee , he would drag me out to the living room and he would push whatever pee he could out . I guess he wanted those M & Ms pretty bad . I finally had to tell him he needed to wait until he really had to pee to use the potty . Thankfully he listened . I am hoping that tomorrow will bring us more successes . I am a little worried about how this will work once we leave the house , but we 'll jump that hurdle once we get there . I 'm just pretty darn proud of the both of us for getting where we are so quickly . He 's pretty smart , once he puts his mind to doing something . Oh ! I almost forgot . . . . . I have been working hard on some things for our homecoming . I am really excited for them . I wish I could share some of them , but they need to remain a surprise and my amazing hunny reads this blog ( hi hunny ! ) But I am really excited . I have the kids outfits picked out , and I just need to find something for me to wear . I also created a little something for M for father 's day which I will share once he receives it . I am pretty proud of how it turned out . I have been feeling pretty creative these last couple of weeks and it 's been fun to see some projects turn out good . I take after my mother and am generally lacking the creative / decorating gene . So , I am pretty proud of my self and how far I have come . Give me a computer and a project and I 'm all set . Now if you want me to draw something , not gonna happen . But if it can be created on the computer , I 'm all set . I think that is why I am thinking of doing my masters in instructional technology . I really love using technology in the classroom , and I would love to get my masters in something that I am interested in . I am also taking two professional development classes on a program our county uses that integrates technology in the classroom . It allows students to take quizzes and tests on the computer ( which also grades them . . . . score ! ) it also gives them access to the textbook online and I can post assignments on there which they can do at home and turn in to me through this website . It 's pretty cool . I also want to take a photoshop class to learn the basics of how to use that program . I just have to find one around here . Ok enough of the random thoughts . I 'm off to bed . Here 's to hoping tomorrow is successful and that my eyes are better than they were today . : ) Good night ! I actually don 't know anyone who is friends with good ole Murphy , but I did not hate him until this deployment and I didn 't despise him until today . We have been lucky so far with this deployment . My only major issues while the husband has been gone was : 1 . his stupid old truck 's battery kept dying , but that was fixed with him buying his new truck on R & R . 2 . The stupid woodpeckers deciding to try to make a nest on the side of my garage . ( I 'm seriously not kidding , our house looks quite ghetto with the tin foil I have to use to keep those pesky birds away ) Do you see the two lovely holes they left ? Literally one on each side . Thank goodness for tin foil . Other hole from the woodpecker 3 . Baby E getting sick , we still aren 't sure what is making her wheeze , but thankfully she is a happy baby . We 've had a few other illnesses since he 's been gone , Little L has had a fever for a few days , he had a hydrocele fixed , and ear infections . Now today put me over the edge . I woke up early because I had a dentist appointment at 0800 ( really let 's not talk about what I was thinking when I scheduled this appointment at this time ) , as I was deciding I needed to get out of bed I noticed that my right eye had a lot of yucky stuff in the corner of it and it kind of hurt . I just thought I was waking up with a lovely headache or some how got something in my eye . I finally stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror . What I saw staring back at my wasn 't a pretty picture , but what I noticed most was that my right eye was swollen . I called my mom and talked to her , she suggested I go to the urgent care and see what was wrong . I got there shortly after they opened and was seen quite quickly . The doctor confirmed what I hoped it wasn 't . . . . . . it was pink eye ! ! ! ! Really ! ? ! ? ? ! I have NEVER in my life had pink eye before . Let me tell you , it sucks ! Not only that but I have the two little ones at home , and my mom is leaving for a trip tomorrow and wasn 't able to help me . Great timing huh ? She offered to cancel her trip , but I told her not to , we would survive . I just have to be extremely careful not to pass this on to the kids . I was really bummed too , I had quite a bit planned for this week to keep us busy . I had at least one outing the the gym every day ( Little L loves playing there ) and we also had a play date scheduled . I obviously cannot go to the gym or play date : ( I was really looking forward to the play date and getting some extra exercise in . I have like 10 - 20 lbs to go before the husband gets home . ( This is one of my deployment goals , to be back at the weight I was when I met him ) She has been amazing since I can remember . She never had kids , but always treated me as one of her own . I remember as a little kid when she lived in Georgia , she would fly up to Michigan to spend Christmas with the family . Every Christmas eve she would spend the night at our house and sleep in MY room . Now being an only child and having someone spend the night is HUGE ! It was great waking her up extra early to see what Santa brought us . She finally moved back to Michigan sometime when I was in middle school . She bought a cute house in downtown Howell . I would spend time with her , go to the movies or just hang out at her house . The spending time together really increased when my parents , out of the blue , separated . I was devastated and she was there . She didn 't pry into what I was thinking or feeling , she just gave me a place to get away from everything . We would scrapbook together , watch movies , she would let me spend the night and she would always make hot chocolate on the stove with mini marshmallows . Now that I have kids , she LOVES our kids like they are her own . She spoils them when she comes to visit , usually with clothes much to Little L 's dismay , and will play endlessly with Little L . He absolute LOVES her . He gets so excited when I tell him she 's coming to visit , and that is all he will talk about until we see her . This weekend was no exception . This weekend was spent in the pool . He was so excited to have someone else to play with . Someone to throw him around , and pull him around and just lavish attention all on him . He was in heaven . They played cars , took a walk , ate ice cream and swam a ton this weekend . I think she loves playing with him . She asked if she could take him with her , I of course said yes : ) I know eventually she would give him back , even he tires her out . It was just great spending some time with her and watching how much Little L loves her and loves to be around her . I just wish she lived closer . Thankfully , Georgia isn 't that far away . Did I mention that Baby E fell asleep in the pool today ? How cute is she ? She was happily floating and kicking then suddenly she just stopped . I looked down and she was sound asleep . Little L with his favorite swim buddy . Aunt Patti with both kids . It 's hard to get both kids to look at the camera at the same time and to get Little L to stop making faces . He is such a ham that it 's hard to get a nice picture out of him these days . And of course no visit is complete without a trip to the Dairy Queen for ice cream ! Today is the first day of summer break . . . . . you 're probably wondering why in the heck did I title this " Sad Day " then ? The reason is because this morning I found out a coworker died suddenly last night . I wasn 't that close with her , but I taught with her for the past four years , went on field trips with her and just saw her yesterday . She looked fine . We don 't know all of the details yet but it is believed it was a heart attack . I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around this . I mean I JUST saw her yesterday . You 'll have to forgive me , I haven 't had anyone close to me pass away when I 've been able to fully comprehend what it means . ( I 'm not sure if that made any sense ) My grandpa died when I was in second grade , but I don 't remember much from that time . And I know at that time I didn 't fully understand what was going on . My great - grandma passed away when I was in middle school , but she had lived to be 101 years old . At that point you know it is coming , while it is still sad she was ready to go . Other than hearing about people I knew of , I haven 't dealt with this . I am having a hard time realizing that I saw her yesterday and she is no longer with us . I just don 't think my brain is comprehending this very well . She was a good teacher . I know some parents had some issues with the way she taught , but she cared so much for her students . She was a really sweet person . She would help you any way she could . Our school lost a good teacher , person , and friend . This really brings into perspective how quickly life can end . I know some people see it more frequently than others , especially in the military world with the war still going on . I think it just reminds us to hold those we love that much closer and to not take any day for granted , you never know when your time is up . So , please pray for the Wesson family , they need all the prayers they can get right now while they are dealing with the sudden loss of their wife , mother , daughter and sister . Rest in Peace Kim ! Today is the husband and I 's 3rd Wedding Anniversary . I cannot believe we have been married for three years . It sure doesn 't feel like it , granted we haven 't spent the last three years physically together . We haven 't actually spent an entire year together since we first started dating . It 's crazy ! I cannot wait until we are actually able to celebrate our anniversary on its actual day . It sure would be nice . The husband is of course amazing and sent me a gift already . He got me a Vera Bradley skin for my laptop and a Vera Bradley lunch box for school . I hadn 't even asked for anything and he came up with this all on his own ! He really is a great guy . I honestly never thought I would find a guy like him . . . . I didn 't think they existed and I also thought I was independent enough to not need a man . I had my share of relationships growing up and I was getting discouraged , especially after I graduated college . I was afraid I was going to have to settle just so I could get married . I actually thought about adopting another cat ( I had two at the time ) , but I really didn 't want to be the cat lady . I had done some eharmony dating when I lived up in Michigan and after another relationship failed , I decided to give it another shot . I am so glad that I did . . . . . because that is how I met my amazing husband . You can read about it here . He truly is my best friend . I love talking to him , spending time with him , doing things with him . I feel like he completes me in some way . I never knew I could love someone the way I love him . It 's hard for me to put into words just how much I love him and how much he means to me . I feel that I 'm not very good at showing him how much I love him and wish I knew a better way to show him , but I just don 't . I just hope he truly knows how much I do love him . I am so proud to be his wife and stand by his side . He is an amazing father , friend , soldier , leader , husband and man . I love him with my whole heart . If you want you can read about our first and second weddings . : ) Yes we had two and once you read tM , These past three years have been amazing . I love you more today then I did on this day three years ago . I never thought I would find such an amazing man to love me , to be the amazing father to our children , to be my best friend . I just hope the next three years are better than the previous and maybe the Army will let me have you at home a little more : ) just maybe . You are the love of my life and I am the luckiest girl in the world to be married to you . I love you ! The husband and I are going to be spending yet another wedding anniversary apart . : ( I wanted to send him a special care package . Something that was different from the normal package . I found the idea for cake in a jar on pinterest . I thought . . . " what a great idea ! " So I set out and made it . I should have put it in more than three jars because there was too much cake batter in each and it overflowed . I added a container of frosting for him to add on top once he got the cake . I then made little tops for each jar . I was pretty proud of them . I hot glued them to the lid . Then I made banana nut bread . He really likes it and I am fairly good at making it . Although I thought it would be a good idea to vacuum pack the bread . . . . . haha . . . . not so much . Don 't ever vacuum pack bread unless it 's frozen . It totally squished the bread . I took it out as quickly as possible and it regained some of its original shape . I was just hoping that it still tasted good . I also had to include his favorite Combos . I had quite a stash built up . He loves taking these out on missions and every time they were on sale I would buy some so any time he asked for a package I had those to add . This is the finished box . I also created the ' 52 Reasons Why I Love You ' book . Again I found the idea on pinterest . It took quite awhile to make it and I was really proud of how it turned out . I can 't believe I didn 't take a picture of it . But that is what is in the box with the blue ribbon . That is left over ribbon from our wedding . : ) I sure do love that color . He got my package about a week after I sent it . I asked how everything turned out and he told me the cake had a bad taste to it . : ( I couldn 't believe it ! He said it smelled good , but did not taste good . He thought it was the frosting that was on top . Then I told him I didn 't add any frosting because there wasn 't room at the top . This is when I found out that the jars were only half full when he got it . Uh oh ! I think the cake melted on its way to the sand box . : ( I was really disappointed because I was so excited to be able to send him cake . I 'm not sure if it 's because I didn 't seal them good or if it was the temperatures , but the Cake in a Jar did not travel well . Thankfully the bread turned out good . : ) I was really happy at least one of them turned out good . He said he liked the card book I made , although that was about all he said . Overall I think he enjoyed the box . I know it 's nothing fancy , but it took quite awhile to make the cake and the bread on top of working . I think it was well worth it . I love to bake and it was a lot of fun and relaxing for me to bake . I 'm glad it got there in plenty of time . I just wish we could spend our anniversary together . Ah well . I should get use to it I guess . : ) This weekend was pretty great . Friday night I hung out at our house with the kids . It was raining pouring outside , so it was nice to just relax at the house with nothing pressing to do . Saturday we woke up and took my car to get its oil change . I swear I have been soooo spoiled . My dad used to take care of my car when I lived in Michigan , then M took over once we became serious . It is really nice to have someone else worry about that , but alas M isn 't here and it had to be done . I took it to the dealership and waiting for an hour with both kids . They behaved REALLY good . We got quite a few compliments from people about how good they were . : ) Go me ! ! ! ! Afterwards we packed their stuff up and I took them to my mom 's house for the night . Yup that 's right . . . . . I was getting a night to myself ! Holy cow ! During the afternoon I was deciding if I should call a friend to go out to dinner , but then I decided I really needed to just hang out at home by myself . After I dropped the kids off , I went for an amazing massage , compliments of my amazing husband . He knows I 've been SUPER stressed lately , so he told me to go get one . It was very relaxing . Although I could do without her massaging my legs , but whatever . Then I ran to Target and got our little Baby E her first bathing suit . Oh my goodness ! It is sooo cute ! I really enjoyed my night to myself . I at Panera for dinner , watched two movies . . . . uninterrupted and enjoyed a skype date with my amazing husband . It was a GREAT evening , even though I did miss my little boogers . Her first bathing suit Sunday when I finally got the house cleaned and grocery shopped , I went to my mom 's to get the kids . She was already in the pool with Little L and waited for me to put Baby E in her suit , knowing it was important for me to put her in her first suit . I know I 'm weird . . . . . I can 't help it . She loves her bath time , so I was pretty sure she would like the pool . She looked sooo cute in her suit ! Of course I had to get her a hat and sunglasses . When we put her in , she just watched everything , taking everything in . Finally she started to smile . She really enjoyed herself . She was in the pool to at least a half hour . That tired her out and she went down for her nap shortly after . I 'm so glad she likes the pool . Little L LOVES to swim . He is in my mom 's pool every weekend . He will try and convince you to take him in almost every day . He is becoming such a great swimmer too . He reminds me of a duck , he is calm on the top , but underneath the water his long legs are kicking furiously . He is so happy to be in the water . I have a feeling once school is out , we will be spending a lot of time at my mom 's pool . Suit with sunglasses |
Sometimes Harley 's just leave me speechless with his curious circus antics . How would you caption this photo ? Turn on your creative juices . Show me what you 've got ! I am on Facebook but it drives me insane . Today I tried to log in and it didn 't recognize me and my device . No idea what that means . But then they posted a bunch of pictures , ordering me to identify who was in the pictures , or else I would be locked - out of Facebook . Well , I could only identify one person , and not even sure I got that right . So Facebook has locked me out . Go figure ! People said I needed Facebook to promote my books . Others somehow communicate endlessly on Facebook . I just don 't have time , but I was trying to update my page and so on , promote my books . I have not seen an increase in book sales because I am on Facebook . But I am going to get my books on Kindle soon , so I hope that helps . The other day my internet company cancelled my entire account , even though I was prepaid . When I paid my monthly fee for August 13 through September 13 , on a credit card , they charged me twice but only gave me credit once . So I called them about this and they promised to look into it saying it would take 2 - 6 weeks . I , like so many , can get so easily frustrated dealing with big companies that don 't care for their customers one bit . Nothing happened . Eventually I asked the bank to reverse one of the duplicate charges . A few days later , they did . So my internet company , shut down my access , closed up my account and told me my old plan was no longer available , I would have to buy into a pricier plan . That is what I think I understood from the customer dis - service person who spoke erratic English with odd mispronunciations Numerous phone calls to the company did nothing but eat up all my cell time with multiple promises that it could take them 2 - 6 weeks to straighten this out . Meanwhile I would have to do without internet . Since 99 % of my income involves the internet , this could really make a dent in my budget . I am out in the boonies , there isn 't anywhere convenient for me to drive the motorhome , to go borrow free WiFi access . Finally I made another gallant attempt on the phone . This time I found someone who actually spoke fairly good English . I did everything in the world to sweet talk and cajole them into understanding the problem , then fixing it . A few hours later I tried the internet . Lo and behold , it worked . I 'm back on my old plan the company discontinued , but if you already had it , you could keep it . The corporations keep changing the rules they play by . Soon as you sign up for a good deal , they discontinue it . A third company , unrelated to all this , used to pay me to write articles . Then they decided the writers were making too much money , so they changed the whole plan around , so you make about 10 cents an hour to write for them . A fourth company that I was selling odd little designs on printed apparel and other products , suddenly changed their whole system around , so that my little profits from them , plummeted , even though the same amount of articles are selling . I just try to plow forward , pray for a miracle and laugh off the insanity of it all . Even my book publisher has changed everything around , so that my next book will make less royalties than the first book . Wasn 't that nice of them ? They make more , I make less . Oh well ! LifeChartering Class C For you non - Rv types , a Class C is my type of motorhome . A Class A is the big bus type RVs . A Calls B is a van conversion . A Class C is built on a modified van chassis . Basically the front of my RV looks like a van , but a box like house has been built over and behind the cab area . So today I am working my tail off trying to tweak a few things and make some repairs . It 's like an old boat , always something to fix . When I finish all that , I need to do more housekeeping and laundry , plus bathe a certain little dog . Puppy doesn 't understand why I can 't play with him much . He is such a hoot , he just loves his toys and he will play by himself , but he prefers to pester me into playing games with him . I love his enthusiasm and optimism . He is such a joy ( and a pest ) to have around . As I write this , a lady on a hot pink scooter with a matching hot pink helmet is touring the park repeatedly . I think she is learning to ride her scooter and using the park for her training ground . About an hour ago , a gorgeous red fox ran right through my camp , disappearing into the woods . I yelled at him to stop , so I could take his picture , but he just ran like hurricane wind , totally ignoring this photographer 's request . Here comes the lady in pink on her fifth trip through the park on her pink scooter . I 'd love to have a red scooter to run my errands with , but I heard red gets more tickets . Other say oh it 's just the red sports cars that get more tickets , most scooters can 't go fast enough to get a ticket . Ut oh , now she hasn 't reappeared again . Maybe I need to go hike to the other end of the park to see if she is OK or perhaps she figured out how to stop the thing . So far I haven 't seen her brake at all , maybe that is why she is doing loops around the parking lot and going back and forth to the picnic area , she is looking for the brakes . I once saw a funny video of some not so bright fool who loaned his motorcycle to his clueless friend while he videotaped it . As his friend roars off on the motorcycle , his head whips around and he screamsDearMissMermaidDotCom I ran into an old friend . She , like I , used to crew professionally on large yachts . Not your garden variety bareboat yachts , but big beautiful , gorgeous yachts . The kind with exotic owners and international crew . Yachts that traveled with an assortment of luxurious accouterments . Things that must be kept up nicely , a place for everything and everything in it 's place . New toys for the rich and famous might mean custom storage accommodations being custom made , and post haste , before the next sail . So a true yacht , has a place for everything and everything in its place . When I bought my tiny little sailboat , a mere 30 ' , it was like having private crew quarters , but I still kept everything ship shape . This enabled me to have great fun , as I could sail on my own whims . It only took me 5 - 10 minutes to leave the harbor , once a decision had been made and I took to making these decisions quite often , since my ridiculous work schedule enabled me to have lengthy amounts of time off . But you need time off , when you 've spent 6 weeks or 6 months , working 16 hours a day , 7 days a week , taking care of others and their yachts . When I finally had a week or two or three off , I kept myself busy keeping my own little yacht in pristine shape and enjoyed many wonderful sails aboard her . I lived aboard her for over 10 years and enjoyed just about every precious moment spent on the sea . I was young and healthy , it was a grand life . I knew the feeling . When I first moved in my home ashore , I went to great pains to put everything away neatly . Then I kept as much of it put away as I could or organized into certain spots where specific things lived . For the land lubber , tacking on a yacht is to go from heeling over on one side , to bringing the sail across the deck and suddenly heeling to the other side . It was at that point , that if you had not put the yachtie things away with care , cabinets or drawers might fly open and spew their contents , leading to much embarrassment . If aboard the owners boat , they would glare , and say , well THAT needs fixing ! Or act totally disgusted or confused , WHAT is wrong with my yacht ? We don 't have things rolling around on the sole , not now , not ever ! Now I am in my motorhome . A friend has " chartered " my motorhome for a trip soon , so I am back in yachtie mode . A place for everything , and everything ( securely ) in its place . Maybe transitioning from land to a motorhome was easier for me , because of my sailing days at sea . I have to go now , I have things to put away , and places for them to be . . . Today I treat you to a blast from the past , a story of life in the islands , from 2006 , when I was living and working in the British Virgin Islands . In the islands we say " tings " rather than " things " . " Mash up " is a car wreck . British Virgin Islands The roads are rough , not as rough as they used to be , but still , we have pot holes and lumps and bumps in the worst places . Cars take a beating here and sometimes car parts fly off the moving cars . Everyday I drive by an old radiator on the side of the road . I wonder how far that car got before they noticed they had lost their radiator . I once saw a jeep a few cars ahead of me , go around a curve and his red tail light cover flew off in the road . I needed a red tail light cover for my old rusty hunk of a jeep , so I was going to stop and retrieve his . But the car in front of me , seemed to take great glee in aiming for it , and grinding it to a million pieces right before my very eyes . Another time I narrowly avoided a wreck , when the car in front of me lost his entire bumper . It loudly clanged into the middle of the road . I swerved sharply and managed to miss it without rolling my jeep over . The car that lost it , just kept going 90 mph like he never noticed . Bet he was a tad surprised when he parked and saw his rear bumper was gone . Yesterday there was another mash up , just west of Nanny Cay . The people looked pretty angry and the cops were there with their measuring tapes , measuring everything . No one was directing traffic , which had been reduced to one lane . I crawled by at a snail 's pace like everyone else , so I could get a good look at the wreck . But one reader , who has recently acquired a home in the BVI , has topped the list of t ' ings in the road . She had always let her husband do the driving on Tortola even though she drove at home , in the USA , all the time . Finally on one of their trips to Tortola , she announced to her husband that she was ready to tackle driving here in the Virgin Islands . She made it down the steep curvy hill from their new home and turned on to the main road and headed for Road Town . She goes around a curve and there in the middle of the road is a queen sized mattress ! The mattress isn 't moving . It 's just laying there in the middle of the road . Finally she manages to negotiate around the mattress , goes up the next hill and starts down , when she realizes the truck in front of her , is backing UP the hill towards her . ( Perhaps he realized he lost the mattress ? ) Like the guy near here who backs up the road to his home every evening . He lives at the top of a hill . First gear has gone out of his little car . He can 't make it up the hill to his home in 2nd gear , so every evening when he comes home , we see him backing up the road to his house . I don 't know why he doesn 't just fix first gear . Maybe he 's waiting for someone 's transmission to fall off in the middle of the road . . . Then there is the real tear jerker . This happened on St John . At the time , the road between Cruz Bay and Coral Bay was a donkey trail full of pot holes with the occasional patch of pavement . It was a rough road to negotiate , and folks openly cursed the government because it took a long time to traverse the mountainous road in the horrible condition it was in at the time . A new carpenter was so excited to get a job there , he packed up and moved everything from New York to St John including his beloved tool box . The first few days he settled into his apartment and searched for a vehicle to buy . He was ecstatic to find a rusty little jeep with a tough engine . He called his new boss and announced he was ready to report for work the next day . Arriving in Coral Bay , he hops out of his jeep at the job sight and reaches around back to grab his tool box . There , where his tool box used to sit was a nice neat rectangular rusty HOLE . He spent the next two to three hours combing that awful road , looking for his tool box . He checked all the deep ruts , looked over the steep cliffs , rustled through the wild bushes and never found so much as a screw driver . I saw him at lunch at the bar , he was downing his 5th or 6th beer as he told me his story . While some folks are honest and will try to find the owner of found items , this was not to be in his case . Beer after beer , he told me about his tools and how old they were and how long it took him to acquire them . One day when I was working as a private chef , my job for many years , I had to go down an awful patch of dirt road to reach a zillion dollar home on the cliffs over the ocean . I had my trusty rusty heap of a jeep loaded to the max with a week 's worth of gourmet groceries and bar items for 8 guests on vacation . Per their request , I had numerous cases of assorted beers and sodas . It had rained a good bit recently , so the dirt patch of road was full of big muddy potholes . It was such a rough patch of road , I had to slow down , creeping through the ruts , guts and pot holes with my heavy cargo . Finally I was back on smooth payment to do the last leg to the exotic villa . My next chore was to do the donkey work of unloading the jeep , carrying everything down a flight of erratic outdoor rock steps , then into the house and kitchen . I noticed a lot of mud was covering my groceries . Fortunately , the guests had not arrived yet , so I could clean things up in the kitchen . When I finally got down to the layer of cases of drinks , I noticed several cases were missing drinks ! How odd . Everything was jumbled up , the jostling down the awful roads had really made a mess of my cargo . I was sure the cases were full when I bought them . Then I saw the problem . My own rusty jeep had developed a hole in the cargo area . See , I had removed the back seat ( it was rotten anyhow ) so I could use the back of the jeep for cargo . Somehow , drinks had managed to come out of the cases , then fall down in the new rusty hole . I grabbed some duct tape , I kept in the glove compartment , then taped up the hole . At least mud wouldn 't be flying up on my groceries anymore . Back in the kitchen , I unpacked the groceries , throwing out the muddy bags , washing things that were splattered in mud . The next morning , I was up at sunrise , to drive back to the villa to start on the breakfast buffet for the vacationers . The dirt road had dried out completely overnight . There scattered down the road , were assorted cans of beer and sodas . Some were still full , others had been fDearMissMermaidDotCom Stretchig a tiny budget is fun . Sure more money is so much easier , but when it is not falling out of the sky , then it 's time to do some serious stretching exercises . Recently , I was pretty ill , thank goodness , I am much better now . Matter of fact , Harley and I just came back from an energetic walk . He is thrilled I am feeling better , as it means we are getting out and walking more . While I was laid up in bed , I would wake up , too tired to actually get out of bed , so I brought my little old computer to bed with me . I use an inverted rectangular basket as a bed desk . Cost of basket was $ 1 . Can 't beat the price for economy . The fact that it allows air to flow freely through it , helped to keep my laptop cool as well . Between sleeping and meditating , I would attempt to work on the laptop . I must have been sicker than I thought , many of my articles for pay , were rejected . Since I couldn 't seem to concentrate much on work , I went on the internet searching for free samples . There are hundreds of websites catering to this , but I found them mostly useless with old outdated info . A few had good stuff , but it was like a needle in a haystack to find them . So I began scanning down the search list for actual companies that were offering free samples , rather than relying on the websites that write about free samples . So far four companies have sent me samples that already arrived in the mail recently . Bragg sent me 3 sample packets . One each of ; Organic Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning , Organic Sprinkle ( 24 Herbs and Spices Seasoning ) and Premium Nutritional Yeast Seasoning . I already love and use Bragg 's organic Apple Cider Vinegar and Amino Acids ( natural soy sauce ) so it 's fun to try out their other products . Emergen - C sent me 2 sample packets of 1 , 000mg Vitamin C Flavored Fizzy Drink Mix in Super Orange and another in Raspberry . I will admit , they are rather tasty . Lacoste sent me a sample card with 4 men 's fragrances , as they were out of the female samples . So each day for fun , a rubbed a different male sample on my arm . I thought they smelled pretty good on me , even if they were designed for men . Prilosec sent 2 free tablets for heartburn . I no longer have any heartburn trouble at all , but I figured I could toss it in the First Aid kit on board the wheel estate for future reference . Harley got into the act and ordered up some dog food samples , but sadly , none have arrived at this time . For a little 6 pound dog , he sure does love variety in his diet . Last summer in Ohio , a pet food store gave us a whole bag full of assorted dog food samples . He enthusiastically tried them all . While the samples were designed to feed a big dog one complete meal , it took little Harley , nearly a week , to polish off each sample . He only eats about 2 tablespoons of dry food once or twice a day . Of course this is supplemented with some " wet " food such as cheese or meat , usually about an ounce of each . He also eats a vitamin everyday . A gentle reader sent him a big container of doggy vitamin wafers as a gift . What an angel ! The wafer is a little too big for him , so I snap it into pieces , then toss it in his food bowl . Eventually he passes by the bowl , chowing down on his vitamin . I 've read about how some small dogs are super peculiar and you have to feed them a strict diet of the exact same food for life . But Harley is different , he likes to try all sorts of things . Some things he will try once but not twice . For instance I gave him sThis morning I put on dried beans to cook in the little 1 . 5 quart crockpot . It cooks beans perfectly . An angel sent me a box of assorted organic dried beans . So today I combined 1 / 3 cup each of black beans , red beans and pinto beans . Once they are soft , I will decide how to flavor them or what to make out of them . Another thing I do with my bean dishes , is to often split it in half , once I 've made the bean dish . Then I use my midget sized food chopper to make bean dip or spread . This way I have a healthy snack waiting in the fridge . I often combine the bean dish with additional ingredients to make the dip , such as jalapenos and onions or cheese or all three . It just depends on what I have on hand at the time . I can also make a sandwich wrap with the bean dip and salad ingredients . I usually use small wheat tortillas , not those jumbo wraps . Those jumbo wraps sold in the stores are often so thick and huge , they equal about 4 pieces of bread , a little too much for my diet . Otherwise I can perk up an ordinary saltine cracker with my bean dip . Life is wonderful , I feel so blessed and lucky to have a comfy bed to go nap in , even if I do have to share it with Harley . He wouldn 't dream of letting me taking a nap by myself . Heaven forbid . Even when I napped in the chair one day , he curled up in my lap . Many folks don 't have a bed of their own . I know I am lucky . Angels look out after me . I don 't know why they do , but I sure am grateful during these wild weird times . It 's never too late . I am trying 1 , 001 things to improve my health and life . So far , I keep waking up alive , so I must be doing something right . Yippee ! Carole King played fabulous piano . I once got a hold of her music to try to play it on the piano myself , but I believe she had 14 fingers , as I could never play all the notes . On the other hand , I once tried to play music written by Barbara Streison , but she has very long fingers . Where I can only reach an octave ( 8 keys ) on the piano , she can reach 12 keys , so you need very long fingers to play her music . I had to pencil in my changes to her music , just so I could play it . I sure miss having a piano . Ah , those were the days . I sure felt that earthquake on the East coast . At the time , I wasn 't sure what had hit me . I was in a parking lot . I had just had some emergency repairs made . It had been a long wait , so now that I was back in my motorhome , I had chosen not to drive off right away . Instead I was piddling around , making lunch for me and the dog . All of a sudden , it felt like the motorhome jumped over a foot . Harley started barking , racing from window to window while I followed him , thinking maybe we had been hit by a car pretty hard . Not a soul nor vehicle was moving anywhere around us . Matter of fact the place was practically deserted because the employees of the business we were parked at , had all gone to lunch themselves . My second thought was maybe we were hit by a 100mph gust of wind . But the nearby flag on a pole , was hanging limply , the sky was clear . It truly puzzled me . I had checked the clock , out of habit , whenever someting weird happens . In the Virgin Islands , I could feel any earthquake above a 3 on the Richter scale . I always noted the time , because I was the local weather reporter . Matter of fact , that is how I got the " Dear Miss Mermaid " moniker . Also , I reported earthquakes I felt to the US Geological Survey office in Puerto Rico . For some bizarre reason , I could feel earthquakes that my neighbors didn 't feel . But they were always the tiny ones in the 3 + range . However , it didn 't occur to me , that while sitting in a parking lot in northeast Georgia , I would feel an earthquake ! So the thought briefly entered and exited my head . Later the news hit me , the east coast , had an earthquake at the same time I felt the jolt . Since then , I 've felt a few tremors . Nothing serious , just the motorhome shake ever so subtly for a nanosecond while puppy and I are not doing a thing . Actually , maybe I 've been feeling tremors since April . No idea . But I did ask the park ranger , what was under my camp spot ? I told him how several times a week , the motorhome would shutter . Have I been feeling weak tremors all along ? Today two angels stepped into my life ever so briefly , but I am VERY grateful . When I came back from the motorhome repairs yesterday , there was a large black dog waiting at my camp spot . She seemed like a big puppy who was very lost . The problem with being in a remote location , is where to post notices of a " FOUND DOG " ? I tried going on Craigslist but for some reason , it wouldn 't post my ad . Nobody was advertising a lost dog to fit her description . I searched for animal control , shelters and rescues in northeast Georgia . I found all one of them . Since it was past closing I emailed them with my dilemma . Found dog , but I had no car , already had a puppy of my own . Not sure it would be safe for me to try to stuff another dog in the motorhome , to go in search of the animal shelter , yet I wanted to help this poor lost soul either get back to her owners or get a home . I thought maybe I would call around , to see if a friend would come visit , and ride with us to the animal shelter . I was just worried I would be driving , and the dog might be going nuts in the motorhome while I was driving . Having an extra human along would help . Some pets love traveling , others have to get used to it . When I rescued Harley , I took a friend with me so she could hold and comfort him while I drove . Then when I helped my friend adopt a sad depressed cat , we went together so I could put the soft - sided cat carrier on my lap , to make the cat feel secure while I gently petted him through the soft woven screen mesh as my friend drove . Amazingly , the cat fell asleep for most of the ride . He is now a gorgeous happy cat , smitten with his new pet parent . But I digress . . . I had the sneaky suspicion this BIG puppy had been dumped here purposely at the park where I workamp . People can be so cruel . She had no collar , she seemed timid , scared and uncertain . She apparently had made herself a temporary home outside the fenced - in dumpster in the park . They keep the jumbo garbage dumpster here locked up behind a fence , since the rest of the park has numerous garbage cans . It 's huge , nearly 9 - 10 feet tall . There was no way she could get into that or any of the garbage , so she was pretty hungry . The fact she had made her little home there , made me wonder if that is where they dumped her out . The park I volunteer at , has no campground , just me here . Whenever I walked Harley , she was there , curled up at the dump . She would run out and play with Harley . She even jumped up on me , rather gently , her eyes staring deep into mine , as if to say " Help me ! " I promised her , I would somehow make it all better . Well today , two ladies on bicycles came up to my motorhome , asking if the dog was mine . I explained that I was trying to make arrangements to find the owners , or to get the dog to the shelter , since I couldn 't adopt her . They were of the opinion too , that she appeared to have been abandoned here . They said they had a car about a mile away at their lake home , they would go get the car , then take the dog to the shelter or adopt her . The dog seemed more than happy to go with them , they had gained her trust . I had a tear in my eye , such generosity , that these two angels were willing to help this poor castaway . It 's amazing they appeared when they did , as I asked them if they had heard from the shelter about my email , or read the Craigslist ad I posted ( which I found later never posted . ) They had heard of neither . Angels ! Real angels ! Later I took Harley for a walk . We went by the dumpster . I burst out laughing . There was one of Harley 's outdoor toys ! I guess at some point when the lost doggy was sniffing around our place , she took a toy back to her temporary lair . That makes me think , she had indeed hDearMissMermaidDotCom Well it just goes to show , you learn something new everyday . When I heard about acheapseat . com I thought it was about airline tickets . But it 's not . It 's a great place to buy tickets to see your favorite band , artist or team such as : just to name a few . I guess you can buy just about anything on the internet now , except gas for your car . I remember the good old days when a great band was coming to town , one could spend hours in line , just waiting to buy the concert tickets because certain bands were sure to sell out the first day . One time , back in the 80 's , when Eric Clapton was coming to my hometown , my boyfriend called me up to see if I wanted to go . Of course I did . The problem was , he didn 't drive , because he was born blind . He too , was an accomplished musician . He was working in a sound studio that day . He often just caught rides here and there , until he ended up where he needed to be . But since he was stuck working that day , he wanted me to pick up the tickets before they were all gone . They were being sold at a music store . But when I went to buy the tickets on my lunch hour , the line was out the door and several blocks long . I had already had lunch , so I didn 't have a whole lot of time left . The line looked like an afternoon 's wait , not a 5 - 10 minute affair . Furthermore , they might run out of tickets before I even made it close to the cashier , as there is no way of telling if someone in front of you is buying 2 tickets or 20 . I called him back at work . I said something like " I hate to do this to you , but don 't you know the owners of the music store ? Call them up and see if they will hold tickets for you . Tell them you can 't get anyone to pick them up for you until tomorrow . See if that will work . " The reason I felt sheepish , is that he was a very proud person and never wanted to be special or treated differently than anyone else . He used to often say " I 'm not blind , I just can 't see ! " This was one time we were clearly asking for a favor , based on his blindness . Well , it worked . He called me back , the store owner had said to him " I 'd never do this for anybody else , but since it 's you , I will pick out two good seats and hold them for you until tomorrow , because I know we are going to sell out today . " So the next day , the music store was back to normal , the tickets having all sold out , the day before . I was able to breeze in , announce I was there to pick up his tickets , pay for them , then leave . No lines , no hassle . When the concert came around , we went to the auditorium . We began following directions to our seats , based on the signs . Because it was crowded , my blind boyfriend , walked single - file right behind me , with his hand on my shoulder . This way he could literally follow me around turns , up stairs and so on , without bumping into people . I finally found the section we belonged in , then started climbing the stairs . We climbed so high , we stopped for a break . Then we climbed some more . At one point , he asked me if I was lost . I said " No , but we 've climbed so high , my ears are popping ! " A million steps later , we were at our seats . On the very last row . The top of the auditorium . Indeed these seats had been so rarely used , they were in excellent shape . I could almost reach up and touch the roof . I was dismayed that the stage waaaaaaaaaaaay down below , was so teeny tiny . He asked me if I could see the stage alright . I lied and said " Oh , just fine ! " When the lights dimmed and the music started , the sound was absolutely awesome . We had both been in this particular auditorium before and had no idea there was a difference in sound , based on your location . Turns out the music store owner , had picked out our tickets because he knew the best sound was at the top of auditorium . Of course now in large venues , they often use electronic screens to duplicate the stage view , so that no matter where you sit , you still have a view of the stage . I still remember that concert . It was also the very first time I had seen a laser light show , which was incredible . I marveled over the pretty colors that seemingly streamed through the air , the color suspended in the beam . So it turned out , I had lots to watch after all . That was 20 something years ago . About a year ago , I heard my old boyfriend was playing music at a bar that was only a few miles from where I was staying . Since I had been living in the Caribbean since the late 80 's , I had not seen him , but we had occasionally spoke on the phone , but at this point , I think it had been 10 years or so since we had talked . I knew he was now married , with a daughter and had relocated to Nashville . But I went to the bar , trying to get there before the show started so I could see him and say hello . But I was late , the show had started . When he went on break , I wandered over , then called his name . I was about to introduce myself to him , feeling sure that he had no clue who I was . He whipped around in my direction , speaking my name , then gave me a big long hug . I was astounded and thrilled . We ended up going outside , having a fun conversation until it was time for him to go back on stage . The world seems so big some days , other times , so small . Written by Last evening another storm hit the area . It was my fault . I had just hung my laundry out to dry . Now I watched it get soaked again , in a matter of seconds . * SIGH * I 'm an old fashioned southerner , so all my undies are hanging indoors , behind closed curtains to dry . I just can 't bring myself to hang them outside for show and tell . Anyone that drives in the park , can readily see what 's hanging on my clothes line . All my under garments are nice and dry this morning , even if everything else is dripping wet outside . Now I am ensconced indoors in dry clean undies , and nothing else , waiting for some soaked clothes to dry so I can get dressed . I am so confused . I thought I planned better than this . Years back when I worked aboard a yacht in Isla Mujeres , Mexico , the captain was a New Yorker . One day I was going to town for fresh fruits and vegetables . This took up over half the day usually . First I had to walk to the gate outside the compound , then stand outside waiting for a taxi . Generally this was an illegal gypsy cab . Once in town , the market was open air . I had to go from stall to stall , picking out my purchases . My Spanish was awful , so it was a lengthy chore while I tortured them with my erratic Spanish . Also , because Isla means Island , no one was in a hurry at all . I had to bring my backpack and cloth shopping bags with me to load up the foods . It was another hour long trip back to the marina , once I found a ride . Then I had to stand at the gate , ringing a cow bell , waiting for someone to come let me in because they had a key shortage . As I was leaving to shop , the captain announced he was doing laundry . It was the first time he had done the laundry for both of us , but I figured it would be OK . The compound had washers and dryers . They weren 't coin operated . You gave your money to the marina manager , telling him how many loads you did . He also made a side income , by doing laundry for the yachts . But my captain said he was going to do it himself . Just prior to landing in Mexico , I had shopped for new underwear in the Virgin Islands . That is because the last yacht I had worked on , sent our laundry out to a very new laundry lady . She had cranked up the propane industrial dryerLast night , after dark , while I was in bed , on the phone , another storm rolled in , complete with lightning . Then the rains suddenly stopped . I opened up the bedroom window by my bed to let some fresh air inside . Suddenly Harley and I heard Bigfoot in the woods . That familiar crashing , thrashing sound of a giant blazing a new trail . Harley started barking then we heard this loud long c - c - c - c - r - r - r - rashhhhhhhh followed by smaller crackling noises , finishing with a loud thud . Or both . I thought a massive tree was about to land on top of me or Bigfoot might make an entrance , searching my camper for food . So I told my friend if our phone call was cut short with a scream , to call 911 to come dig me out and I gave them my address and directions . Luckily , no such bad thing happened . I will have to venture out today to see if I can find the source of the clatter . Last week , at a campground south of me , on the lake , a sudden storm broke out wreaking havoc at the campground . One travel trailer flipped over on it 's roof , sending the 7 occupants inside all to the emergency room . How frightening that must have been for them . I understand the campground was so badly damaged , along with loads of camping gear , that it is closed up completely , until they can clean up the mess . Above is home sweet home , before the storms hit , before I got the bright idea to do laundry . Now ( not shown ) I have my cantankerous awning put away . This morning , the laundry line in back is covered in soaking wet laundry from yesterday 's attempt at cleanliness . Hartwell Lake is receding , as more water is needed to make surplus power . The rains haven 't been plentiful to keep the lake topped up . The original lake shore is at the treeline . Look at all the grass that is clinging to the mud . Now if that mud was your front yard , you could bet not a blade of grass would grow for you . The grass in this area is so lush , that with a little grooming , it could easily resemble a golf course by the lake . Wild flowers poke out of the mud , offering a beautiful contrast . For some reason , not a single weed will grow on this expansive section of red mud left by the lowering levels of the lake . Nature is fickle . Why grass and flowers grow in one patch of mud and not in another , is just another mystery of nature . I am appalled at how much garbage is just strewn around the park when I am not looking . This park must have over two dozen garbage cans , yet folks toss their garbage out the car window , or abandon their fishing or picnicking area , just leaving all their garbage behind . Even though this is a " No Alcohol Allowed " park , I pick up dozens of beer cans on my walks . Are beer drinkers exempt from using garbage cans ? Look at the bucolic scene above . There is a vehicle tire in the woods ! It was not there two days ago . It 's about 100 yards from the parking lot at the public picnic shelter . Someone went to all the trouble to bring their unwanted tire down here to the park , then roll it off into the woods . How I wish they had just propped it up next to the garbage can . Why hide it in the woods ? Another day I found a gas tank for a boat hidden in the forest behind the public restrooms . There is absolutely no way it could have washed up ashore there . We 've never had a flood here to reach those heights . In my utopia , we would have a hunter 's season on litter bugs . You could shoot to kill anyone who tosses their garbage out at nature rather than put it in a garbage can or bin . As for those thoughtful parents that leave their disgusting dirty baby diapers behind where ever they please , I wonder , areDearMissMermaid . Com Subscribe to Dear Miss Mermaid for 3 cents per day * Make A Donation * * Proceeds Help With Medical Mess Hurricanes and Hangovers By Dear Miss Mermaid Amazon ( Buy 2 , Ships Free ) or Gone Crazy Special $ 9 . 99 It 's 3am and I am wide awake drinking Hazelnut coffee laced with low fat milk . A storm has broken out complete with thunder , lightning , rumblings , mumblings and copious amounts of rain . I 've been feeling terribly weak and having to rest up often . Now I am trying to stay awake and get things done . So far , I 've managed to stare out the window monitoring the storm , while rubbing the sleepy puppy 's belly . My awning is still put away but my patio stuff is outside , so everything is getting soaked . I 'm not going out in the dark alone out here to cover it all up . The wild life hunts at night . I don 't wish to disturb them nor become part of the food chain . I enjoy strong dark coffee with nearly equal amounts of milk . When I was working in Venezuela , I became hooked on strong coffee . Many of my American friends choke on my coffee , preferring to add equal amounts of water to it before they add their own accouterments . Hazelnut coffee was deeply discounted at the store , so I bought some . Oh my gosh , what a treat that has turned out to be . It is wonderful stuff , tasting naturally sweet . I had no idea flavored coffee could be so delightful . I 've always shied away from flavored coffees preferred super strong black stuff that makes the spoon take notice and stand up straight . ( Some say my coffee can corrode a spoon . ) Hazelnuts are full of antioxidants , plus B and E vitamins . It 's used to flavor Frangelico too . My little old wheel estate came with an undercabinet Black and Decker coffee maker , that I found out was an option that Fleetwood installed . According to the coffeemaker manual , it is circa 1993 and still perking along nicely . I 'd love to have the new and improved undercabinet coffee maker by Black and Decker that now includes a thermal carafe . Mine just has the regular fragile glass carafe . Dream on ! I 'm going to have to sell a lot of lemonade or books or both . Black & Decker SDC850 SpaceMaker 8 - Cup Coffeemaker with Thermal Carafe I set up a lemonade stand on my blog , in the right column . : ) If anyone wants to buy lemonade , it goes to a great cause ! ( An eccentric recuperating mermaid . . . ) |
Sometimes Harley 's just leave me speechless with his curious circus antics . How would you caption this photo ? Turn on your creative juices . Show me what you 've got ! I am on Facebook but it drives me insane . Today I tried to log in and it didn 't recognize me and my device . No idea what that means . But then they posted a bunch of pictures , ordering me to identify who was in the pictures , or else I would be locked - out of Facebook . Well , I could only identify one person , and not even sure I got that right . So Facebook has locked me out . Go figure ! People said I needed Facebook to promote my books . Others somehow communicate endlessly on Facebook . I just don 't have time , but I was trying to update my page and so on , promote my books . I have not seen an increase in book sales because I am on Facebook . But I am going to get my books on Kindle soon , so I hope that helps . The other day my internet company cancelled my entire account , even though I was prepaid . When I paid my monthly fee for August 13 through September 13 , on a credit card , they charged me twice but only gave me credit once . So I called them about this and they promised to look into it saying it would take 2 - 6 weeks . I , like so many , can get so easily frustrated dealing with big companies that don 't care for their customers one bit . Nothing happened . Eventually I asked the bank to reverse one of the duplicate charges . A few days later , they did . So my internet company , shut down my access , closed up my account and told me my old plan was no longer available , I would have to buy into a pricier plan . That is what I think I understood from the customer dis - service person who spoke erratic English with odd mispronunciations Numerous phone calls to the company did nothing but eat up all my cell time with multiple promises that it could take them 2 - 6 weeks to straighten this out . Meanwhile I would have to do without internet . Since 99 % of my income involves the internet , this could really make a dent in my budget . I am out in the boonies , there isn 't anywhere convenient for me to drive the motorhome , to go borrow free WiFi access . Finally I made another gallant attempt on the phone . This time I found someone who actually spoke fairly good English . I did everything in the world to sweet talk and cajole them into understanding the problem , then fixing it . A few hours later I tried the internet . Lo and behold , it worked . I 'm back on my old plan the company discontinued , but if you already had it , you could keep it . The corporations keep changing the rules they play by . Soon as you sign up for a good deal , they discontinue it . A third company , unrelated to all this , used to pay me to write articles . Then they decided the writers were making too much money , so they changed the whole plan around , so you make about 10 cents an hour to write for them . A fourth company that I was selling odd little designs on printed apparel and other products , suddenly changed their whole system around , so that my little profits from them , plummeted , even though the same amount of articles are selling . I just try to plow forward , pray for a miracle and laugh off the insanity of it all . Even my book publisher has changed everything around , so that my next book will make less royalties than the first book . Wasn 't that nice of them ? They make more , I make less . Oh well ! LifeChartering Class C For you non - Rv types , a Class C is my type of motorhome . A Class A is the big bus type RVs . A Calls B is a van conversion . A Class C is built on a modified van chassis . Basically the front of my RV looks like a van , but a box like house has been built over and behind the cab area . So today I am working my tail off trying to tweak a few things and make some repairs . It 's like an old boat , always something to fix . When I finish all that , I need to do more housekeeping and laundry , plus bathe a certain little dog . Puppy doesn 't understand why I can 't play with him much . He is such a hoot , he just loves his toys and he will play by himself , but he prefers to pester me into playing games with him . I love his enthusiasm and optimism . He is such a joy ( and a pest ) to have around . As I write this , a lady on a hot pink scooter with a matching hot pink helmet is touring the park repeatedly . I think she is learning to ride her scooter and using the park for her training ground . About an hour ago , a gorgeous red fox ran right through my camp , disappearing into the woods . I yelled at him to stop , so I could take his picture , but he just ran like hurricane wind , totally ignoring this photographer 's request . Here comes the lady in pink on her fifth trip through the park on her pink scooter . I 'd love to have a red scooter to run my errands with , but I heard red gets more tickets . Other say oh it 's just the red sports cars that get more tickets , most scooters can 't go fast enough to get a ticket . Ut oh , now she hasn 't reappeared again . Maybe I need to go hike to the other end of the park to see if she is OK or perhaps she figured out how to stop the thing . So far I haven 't seen her brake at all , maybe that is why she is doing loops around the parking lot and going back and forth to the picnic area , she is looking for the brakes . I once saw a funny video of some not so bright fool who loaned his motorcycle to his clueless friend while he videotaped it . As his friend roars off on the motorcycle , his head whips around and he screamsDearMissMermaidDotCom I ran into an old friend . She , like I , used to crew professionally on large yachts . Not your garden variety bareboat yachts , but big beautiful , gorgeous yachts . The kind with exotic owners and international crew . Yachts that traveled with an assortment of luxurious accouterments . Things that must be kept up nicely , a place for everything and everything in it 's place . New toys for the rich and famous might mean custom storage accommodations being custom made , and post haste , before the next sail . So a true yacht , has a place for everything and everything in its place . When I bought my tiny little sailboat , a mere 30 ' , it was like having private crew quarters , but I still kept everything ship shape . This enabled me to have great fun , as I could sail on my own whims . It only took me 5 - 10 minutes to leave the harbor , once a decision had been made and I took to making these decisions quite often , since my ridiculous work schedule enabled me to have lengthy amounts of time off . But you need time off , when you 've spent 6 weeks or 6 months , working 16 hours a day , 7 days a week , taking care of others and their yachts . When I finally had a week or two or three off , I kept myself busy keeping my own little yacht in pristine shape and enjoyed many wonderful sails aboard her . I lived aboard her for over 10 years and enjoyed just about every precious moment spent on the sea . I was young and healthy , it was a grand life . I knew the feeling . When I first moved in my home ashore , I went to great pains to put everything away neatly . Then I kept as much of it put away as I could or organized into certain spots where specific things lived . For the land lubber , tacking on a yacht is to go from heeling over on one side , to bringing the sail across the deck and suddenly heeling to the other side . It was at that point , that if you had not put the yachtie things away with care , cabinets or drawers might fly open and spew their contents , leading to much embarrassment . If aboard the owners boat , they would glare , and say , well THAT needs fixing ! Or act totally disgusted or confused , WHAT is wrong with my yacht ? We don 't have things rolling around on the sole , not now , not ever ! Now I am in my motorhome . A friend has " chartered " my motorhome for a trip soon , so I am back in yachtie mode . A place for everything , and everything ( securely ) in its place . Maybe transitioning from land to a motorhome was easier for me , because of my sailing days at sea . I have to go now , I have things to put away , and places for them to be . . . Today I treat you to a blast from the past , a story of life in the islands , from 2006 , when I was living and working in the British Virgin Islands . In the islands we say " tings " rather than " things " . " Mash up " is a car wreck . British Virgin Islands The roads are rough , not as rough as they used to be , but still , we have pot holes and lumps and bumps in the worst places . Cars take a beating here and sometimes car parts fly off the moving cars . Everyday I drive by an old radiator on the side of the road . I wonder how far that car got before they noticed they had lost their radiator . I once saw a jeep a few cars ahead of me , go around a curve and his red tail light cover flew off in the road . I needed a red tail light cover for my old rusty hunk of a jeep , so I was going to stop and retrieve his . But the car in front of me , seemed to take great glee in aiming for it , and grinding it to a million pieces right before my very eyes . Another time I narrowly avoided a wreck , when the car in front of me lost his entire bumper . It loudly clanged into the middle of the road . I swerved sharply and managed to miss it without rolling my jeep over . The car that lost it , just kept going 90 mph like he never noticed . Bet he was a tad surprised when he parked and saw his rear bumper was gone . Yesterday there was another mash up , just west of Nanny Cay . The people looked pretty angry and the cops were there with their measuring tapes , measuring everything . No one was directing traffic , which had been reduced to one lane . I crawled by at a snail 's pace like everyone else , so I could get a good look at the wreck . But one reader , who has recently acquired a home in the BVI , has topped the list of t ' ings in the road . She had always let her husband do the driving on Tortola even though she drove at home , in the USA , all the time . Finally on one of their trips to Tortola , she announced to her husband that she was ready to tackle driving here in the Virgin Islands . She made it down the steep curvy hill from their new home and turned on to the main road and headed for Road Town . She goes around a curve and there in the middle of the road is a queen sized mattress ! The mattress isn 't moving . It 's just laying there in the middle of the road . Finally she manages to negotiate around the mattress , goes up the next hill and starts down , when she realizes the truck in front of her , is backing UP the hill towards her . ( Perhaps he realized he lost the mattress ? ) Like the guy near here who backs up the road to his home every evening . He lives at the top of a hill . First gear has gone out of his little car . He can 't make it up the hill to his home in 2nd gear , so every evening when he comes home , we see him backing up the road to his house . I don 't know why he doesn 't just fix first gear . Maybe he 's waiting for someone 's transmission to fall off in the middle of the road . . . Then there is the real tear jerker . This happened on St John . At the time , the road between Cruz Bay and Coral Bay was a donkey trail full of pot holes with the occasional patch of pavement . It was a rough road to negotiate , and folks openly cursed the government because it took a long time to traverse the mountainous road in the horrible condition it was in at the time . A new carpenter was so excited to get a job there , he packed up and moved everything from New York to St John including his beloved tool box . The first few days he settled into his apartment and searched for a vehicle to buy . He was ecstatic to find a rusty little jeep with a tough engine . He called his new boss and announced he was ready to report for work the next day . Arriving in Coral Bay , he hops out of his jeep at the job sight and reaches around back to grab his tool box . There , where his tool box used to sit was a nice neat rectangular rusty HOLE . He spent the next two to three hours combing that awful road , looking for his tool box . He checked all the deep ruts , looked over the steep cliffs , rustled through the wild bushes and never found so much as a screw driver . I saw him at lunch at the bar , he was downing his 5th or 6th beer as he told me his story . While some folks are honest and will try to find the owner of found items , this was not to be in his case . Beer after beer , he told me about his tools and how old they were and how long it took him to acquire them . One day when I was working as a private chef , my job for many years , I had to go down an awful patch of dirt road to reach a zillion dollar home on the cliffs over the ocean . I had my trusty rusty heap of a jeep loaded to the max with a week 's worth of gourmet groceries and bar items for 8 guests on vacation . Per their request , I had numerous cases of assorted beers and sodas . It had rained a good bit recently , so the dirt patch of road was full of big muddy potholes . It was such a rough patch of road , I had to slow down , creeping through the ruts , guts and pot holes with my heavy cargo . Finally I was back on smooth payment to do the last leg to the exotic villa . My next chore was to do the donkey work of unloading the jeep , carrying everything down a flight of erratic outdoor rock steps , then into the house and kitchen . I noticed a lot of mud was covering my groceries . Fortunately , the guests had not arrived yet , so I could clean things up in the kitchen . When I finally got down to the layer of cases of drinks , I noticed several cases were missing drinks ! How odd . Everything was jumbled up , the jostling down the awful roads had really made a mess of my cargo . I was sure the cases were full when I bought them . Then I saw the problem . My own rusty jeep had developed a hole in the cargo area . See , I had removed the back seat ( it was rotten anyhow ) so I could use the back of the jeep for cargo . Somehow , drinks had managed to come out of the cases , then fall down in the new rusty hole . I grabbed some duct tape , I kept in the glove compartment , then taped up the hole . At least mud wouldn 't be flying up on my groceries anymore . Back in the kitchen , I unpacked the groceries , throwing out the muddy bags , washing things that were splattered in mud . The next morning , I was up at sunrise , to drive back to the villa to start on the breakfast buffet for the vacationers . The dirt road had dried out completely overnight . There scattered down the road , were assorted cans of beer and sodas . Some were still full , others had been fDearMissMermaidDotCom Stretchig a tiny budget is fun . Sure more money is so much easier , but when it is not falling out of the sky , then it 's time to do some serious stretching exercises . Recently , I was pretty ill , thank goodness , I am much better now . Matter of fact , Harley and I just came back from an energetic walk . He is thrilled I am feeling better , as it means we are getting out and walking more . While I was laid up in bed , I would wake up , too tired to actually get out of bed , so I brought my little old computer to bed with me . I use an inverted rectangular basket as a bed desk . Cost of basket was $ 1 . Can 't beat the price for economy . The fact that it allows air to flow freely through it , helped to keep my laptop cool as well . Between sleeping and meditating , I would attempt to work on the laptop . I must have been sicker than I thought , many of my articles for pay , were rejected . Since I couldn 't seem to concentrate much on work , I went on the internet searching for free samples . There are hundreds of websites catering to this , but I found them mostly useless with old outdated info . A few had good stuff , but it was like a needle in a haystack to find them . So I began scanning down the search list for actual companies that were offering free samples , rather than relying on the websites that write about free samples . So far four companies have sent me samples that already arrived in the mail recently . Bragg sent me 3 sample packets . One each of ; Organic Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning , Organic Sprinkle ( 24 Herbs and Spices Seasoning ) and Premium Nutritional Yeast Seasoning . I already love and use Bragg 's organic Apple Cider Vinegar and Amino Acids ( natural soy sauce ) so it 's fun to try out their other products . Emergen - C sent me 2 sample packets of 1 , 000mg Vitamin C Flavored Fizzy Drink Mix in Super Orange and another in Raspberry . I will admit , they are rather tasty . Lacoste sent me a sample card with 4 men 's fragrances , as they were out of the female samples . So each day for fun , a rubbed a different male sample on my arm . I thought they smelled pretty good on me , even if they were designed for men . Prilosec sent 2 free tablets for heartburn . I no longer have any heartburn trouble at all , but I figured I could toss it in the First Aid kit on board the wheel estate for future reference . Harley got into the act and ordered up some dog food samples , but sadly , none have arrived at this time . For a little 6 pound dog , he sure does love variety in his diet . Last summer in Ohio , a pet food store gave us a whole bag full of assorted dog food samples . He enthusiastically tried them all . While the samples were designed to feed a big dog one complete meal , it took little Harley , nearly a week , to polish off each sample . He only eats about 2 tablespoons of dry food once or twice a day . Of course this is supplemented with some " wet " food such as cheese or meat , usually about an ounce of each . He also eats a vitamin everyday . A gentle reader sent him a big container of doggy vitamin wafers as a gift . What an angel ! The wafer is a little too big for him , so I snap it into pieces , then toss it in his food bowl . Eventually he passes by the bowl , chowing down on his vitamin . I 've read about how some small dogs are super peculiar and you have to feed them a strict diet of the exact same food for life . But Harley is different , he likes to try all sorts of things . Some things he will try once but not twice . For instance I gave him sThis morning I put on dried beans to cook in the little 1 . 5 quart crockpot . It cooks beans perfectly . An angel sent me a box of assorted organic dried beans . So today I combined 1 / 3 cup each of black beans , red beans and pinto beans . Once they are soft , I will decide how to flavor them or what to make out of them . Another thing I do with my bean dishes , is to often split it in half , once I 've made the bean dish . Then I use my midget sized food chopper to make bean dip or spread . This way I have a healthy snack waiting in the fridge . I often combine the bean dish with additional ingredients to make the dip , such as jalapenos and onions or cheese or all three . It just depends on what I have on hand at the time . I can also make a sandwich wrap with the bean dip and salad ingredients . I usually use small wheat tortillas , not those jumbo wraps . Those jumbo wraps sold in the stores are often so thick and huge , they equal about 4 pieces of bread , a little too much for my diet . Otherwise I can perk up an ordinary saltine cracker with my bean dip . Life is wonderful , I feel so blessed and lucky to have a comfy bed to go nap in , even if I do have to share it with Harley . He wouldn 't dream of letting me taking a nap by myself . Heaven forbid . Even when I napped in the chair one day , he curled up in my lap . Many folks don 't have a bed of their own . I know I am lucky . Angels look out after me . I don 't know why they do , but I sure am grateful during these wild weird times . It 's never too late . I am trying 1 , 001 things to improve my health and life . So far , I keep waking up alive , so I must be doing something right . Yippee ! Carole King played fabulous piano . I once got a hold of her music to try to play it on the piano myself , but I believe she had 14 fingers , as I could never play all the notes . On the other hand , I once tried to play music written by Barbara Streison , but she has very long fingers . Where I can only reach an octave ( 8 keys ) on the piano , she can reach 12 keys , so you need very long fingers to play her music . I had to pencil in my changes to her music , just so I could play it . I sure miss having a piano . Ah , those were the days . I sure felt that earthquake on the East coast . At the time , I wasn 't sure what had hit me . I was in a parking lot . I had just had some emergency repairs made . It had been a long wait , so now that I was back in my motorhome , I had chosen not to drive off right away . Instead I was piddling around , making lunch for me and the dog . All of a sudden , it felt like the motorhome jumped over a foot . Harley started barking , racing from window to window while I followed him , thinking maybe we had been hit by a car pretty hard . Not a soul nor vehicle was moving anywhere around us . Matter of fact the place was practically deserted because the employees of the business we were parked at , had all gone to lunch themselves . My second thought was maybe we were hit by a 100mph gust of wind . But the nearby flag on a pole , was hanging limply , the sky was clear . It truly puzzled me . I had checked the clock , out of habit , whenever someting weird happens . In the Virgin Islands , I could feel any earthquake above a 3 on the Richter scale . I always noted the time , because I was the local weather reporter . Matter of fact , that is how I got the " Dear Miss Mermaid " moniker . Also , I reported earthquakes I felt to the US Geological Survey office in Puerto Rico . For some bizarre reason , I could feel earthquakes that my neighbors didn 't feel . But they were always the tiny ones in the 3 + range . However , it didn 't occur to me , that while sitting in a parking lot in northeast Georgia , I would feel an earthquake ! So the thought briefly entered and exited my head . Later the news hit me , the east coast , had an earthquake at the same time I felt the jolt . Since then , I 've felt a few tremors . Nothing serious , just the motorhome shake ever so subtly for a nanosecond while puppy and I are not doing a thing . Actually , maybe I 've been feeling tremors since April . No idea . But I did ask the park ranger , what was under my camp spot ? I told him how several times a week , the motorhome would shutter . Have I been feeling weak tremors all along ? Today two angels stepped into my life ever so briefly , but I am VERY grateful . When I came back from the motorhome repairs yesterday , there was a large black dog waiting at my camp spot . She seemed like a big puppy who was very lost . The problem with being in a remote location , is where to post notices of a " FOUND DOG " ? I tried going on Craigslist but for some reason , it wouldn 't post my ad . Nobody was advertising a lost dog to fit her description . I searched for animal control , shelters and rescues in northeast Georgia . I found all one of them . Since it was past closing I emailed them with my dilemma . Found dog , but I had no car , already had a puppy of my own . Not sure it would be safe for me to try to stuff another dog in the motorhome , to go in search of the animal shelter , yet I wanted to help this poor lost soul either get back to her owners or get a home . I thought maybe I would call around , to see if a friend would come visit , and ride with us to the animal shelter . I was just worried I would be driving , and the dog might be going nuts in the motorhome while I was driving . Having an extra human along would help . Some pets love traveling , others have to get used to it . When I rescued Harley , I took a friend with me so she could hold and comfort him while I drove . Then when I helped my friend adopt a sad depressed cat , we went together so I could put the soft - sided cat carrier on my lap , to make the cat feel secure while I gently petted him through the soft woven screen mesh as my friend drove . Amazingly , the cat fell asleep for most of the ride . He is now a gorgeous happy cat , smitten with his new pet parent . But I digress . . . I had the sneaky suspicion this BIG puppy had been dumped here purposely at the park where I workamp . People can be so cruel . She had no collar , she seemed timid , scared and uncertain . She apparently had made herself a temporary home outside the fenced - in dumpster in the park . They keep the jumbo garbage dumpster here locked up behind a fence , since the rest of the park has numerous garbage cans . It 's huge , nearly 9 - 10 feet tall . There was no way she could get into that or any of the garbage , so she was pretty hungry . The fact she had made her little home there , made me wonder if that is where they dumped her out . The park I volunteer at , has no campground , just me here . Whenever I walked Harley , she was there , curled up at the dump . She would run out and play with Harley . She even jumped up on me , rather gently , her eyes staring deep into mine , as if to say " Help me ! " I promised her , I would somehow make it all better . Well today , two ladies on bicycles came up to my motorhome , asking if the dog was mine . I explained that I was trying to make arrangements to find the owners , or to get the dog to the shelter , since I couldn 't adopt her . They were of the opinion too , that she appeared to have been abandoned here . They said they had a car about a mile away at their lake home , they would go get the car , then take the dog to the shelter or adopt her . The dog seemed more than happy to go with them , they had gained her trust . I had a tear in my eye , such generosity , that these two angels were willing to help this poor castaway . It 's amazing they appeared when they did , as I asked them if they had heard from the shelter about my email , or read the Craigslist ad I posted ( which I found later never posted . ) They had heard of neither . Angels ! Real angels ! Later I took Harley for a walk . We went by the dumpster . I burst out laughing . There was one of Harley 's outdoor toys ! I guess at some point when the lost doggy was sniffing around our place , she took a toy back to her temporary lair . That makes me think , she had indeed hDearMissMermaidDotCom Well it just goes to show , you learn something new everyday . When I heard about acheapseat . com I thought it was about airline tickets . But it 's not . It 's a great place to buy tickets to see your favorite band , artist or team such as : just to name a few . I guess you can buy just about anything on the internet now , except gas for your car . I remember the good old days when a great band was coming to town , one could spend hours in line , just waiting to buy the concert tickets because certain bands were sure to sell out the first day . One time , back in the 80 's , when Eric Clapton was coming to my hometown , my boyfriend called me up to see if I wanted to go . Of course I did . The problem was , he didn 't drive , because he was born blind . He too , was an accomplished musician . He was working in a sound studio that day . He often just caught rides here and there , until he ended up where he needed to be . But since he was stuck working that day , he wanted me to pick up the tickets before they were all gone . They were being sold at a music store . But when I went to buy the tickets on my lunch hour , the line was out the door and several blocks long . I had already had lunch , so I didn 't have a whole lot of time left . The line looked like an afternoon 's wait , not a 5 - 10 minute affair . Furthermore , they might run out of tickets before I even made it close to the cashier , as there is no way of telling if someone in front of you is buying 2 tickets or 20 . I called him back at work . I said something like " I hate to do this to you , but don 't you know the owners of the music store ? Call them up and see if they will hold tickets for you . Tell them you can 't get anyone to pick them up for you until tomorrow . See if that will work . " The reason I felt sheepish , is that he was a very proud person and never wanted to be special or treated differently than anyone else . He used to often say " I 'm not blind , I just can 't see ! " This was one time we were clearly asking for a favor , based on his blindness . Well , it worked . He called me back , the store owner had said to him " I 'd never do this for anybody else , but since it 's you , I will pick out two good seats and hold them for you until tomorrow , because I know we are going to sell out today . " So the next day , the music store was back to normal , the tickets having all sold out , the day before . I was able to breeze in , announce I was there to pick up his tickets , pay for them , then leave . No lines , no hassle . When the concert came around , we went to the auditorium . We began following directions to our seats , based on the signs . Because it was crowded , my blind boyfriend , walked single - file right behind me , with his hand on my shoulder . This way he could literally follow me around turns , up stairs and so on , without bumping into people . I finally found the section we belonged in , then started climbing the stairs . We climbed so high , we stopped for a break . Then we climbed some more . At one point , he asked me if I was lost . I said " No , but we 've climbed so high , my ears are popping ! " A million steps later , we were at our seats . On the very last row . The top of the auditorium . Indeed these seats had been so rarely used , they were in excellent shape . I could almost reach up and touch the roof . I was dismayed that the stage waaaaaaaaaaaay down below , was so teeny tiny . He asked me if I could see the stage alright . I lied and said " Oh , just fine ! " When the lights dimmed and the music started , the sound was absolutely awesome . We had both been in this particular auditorium before and had no idea there was a difference in sound , based on your location . Turns out the music store owner , had picked out our tickets because he knew the best sound was at the top of auditorium . Of course now in large venues , they often use electronic screens to duplicate the stage view , so that no matter where you sit , you still have a view of the stage . I still remember that concert . It was also the very first time I had seen a laser light show , which was incredible . I marveled over the pretty colors that seemingly streamed through the air , the color suspended in the beam . So it turned out , I had lots to watch after all . That was 20 something years ago . About a year ago , I heard my old boyfriend was playing music at a bar that was only a few miles from where I was staying . Since I had been living in the Caribbean since the late 80 's , I had not seen him , but we had occasionally spoke on the phone , but at this point , I think it had been 10 years or so since we had talked . I knew he was now married , with a daughter and had relocated to Nashville . But I went to the bar , trying to get there before the show started so I could see him and say hello . But I was late , the show had started . When he went on break , I wandered over , then called his name . I was about to introduce myself to him , feeling sure that he had no clue who I was . He whipped around in my direction , speaking my name , then gave me a big long hug . I was astounded and thrilled . We ended up going outside , having a fun conversation until it was time for him to go back on stage . The world seems so big some days , other times , so small . Written by Last evening another storm hit the area . It was my fault . I had just hung my laundry out to dry . Now I watched it get soaked again , in a matter of seconds . * SIGH * I 'm an old fashioned southerner , so all my undies are hanging indoors , behind closed curtains to dry . I just can 't bring myself to hang them outside for show and tell . Anyone that drives in the park , can readily see what 's hanging on my clothes line . All my under garments are nice and dry this morning , even if everything else is dripping wet outside . Now I am ensconced indoors in dry clean undies , and nothing else , waiting for some soaked clothes to dry so I can get dressed . I am so confused . I thought I planned better than this . Years back when I worked aboard a yacht in Isla Mujeres , Mexico , the captain was a New Yorker . One day I was going to town for fresh fruits and vegetables . This took up over half the day usually . First I had to walk to the gate outside the compound , then stand outside waiting for a taxi . Generally this was an illegal gypsy cab . Once in town , the market was open air . I had to go from stall to stall , picking out my purchases . My Spanish was awful , so it was a lengthy chore while I tortured them with my erratic Spanish . Also , because Isla means Island , no one was in a hurry at all . I had to bring my backpack and cloth shopping bags with me to load up the foods . It was another hour long trip back to the marina , once I found a ride . Then I had to stand at the gate , ringing a cow bell , waiting for someone to come let me in because they had a key shortage . As I was leaving to shop , the captain announced he was doing laundry . It was the first time he had done the laundry for both of us , but I figured it would be OK . The compound had washers and dryers . They weren 't coin operated . You gave your money to the marina manager , telling him how many loads you did . He also made a side income , by doing laundry for the yachts . But my captain said he was going to do it himself . Just prior to landing in Mexico , I had shopped for new underwear in the Virgin Islands . That is because the last yacht I had worked on , sent our laundry out to a very new laundry lady . She had cranked up the propane industrial dryerLast night , after dark , while I was in bed , on the phone , another storm rolled in , complete with lightning . Then the rains suddenly stopped . I opened up the bedroom window by my bed to let some fresh air inside . Suddenly Harley and I heard Bigfoot in the woods . That familiar crashing , thrashing sound of a giant blazing a new trail . Harley started barking then we heard this loud long c - c - c - c - r - r - r - rashhhhhhhh followed by smaller crackling noises , finishing with a loud thud . Or both . I thought a massive tree was about to land on top of me or Bigfoot might make an entrance , searching my camper for food . So I told my friend if our phone call was cut short with a scream , to call 911 to come dig me out and I gave them my address and directions . Luckily , no such bad thing happened . I will have to venture out today to see if I can find the source of the clatter . Last week , at a campground south of me , on the lake , a sudden storm broke out wreaking havoc at the campground . One travel trailer flipped over on it 's roof , sending the 7 occupants inside all to the emergency room . How frightening that must have been for them . I understand the campground was so badly damaged , along with loads of camping gear , that it is closed up completely , until they can clean up the mess . Above is home sweet home , before the storms hit , before I got the bright idea to do laundry . Now ( not shown ) I have my cantankerous awning put away . This morning , the laundry line in back is covered in soaking wet laundry from yesterday 's attempt at cleanliness . Hartwell Lake is receding , as more water is needed to make surplus power . The rains haven 't been plentiful to keep the lake topped up . The original lake shore is at the treeline . Look at all the grass that is clinging to the mud . Now if that mud was your front yard , you could bet not a blade of grass would grow for you . The grass in this area is so lush , that with a little grooming , it could easily resemble a golf course by the lake . Wild flowers poke out of the mud , offering a beautiful contrast . For some reason , not a single weed will grow on this expansive section of red mud left by the lowering levels of the lake . Nature is fickle . Why grass and flowers grow in one patch of mud and not in another , is just another mystery of nature . I am appalled at how much garbage is just strewn around the park when I am not looking . This park must have over two dozen garbage cans , yet folks toss their garbage out the car window , or abandon their fishing or picnicking area , just leaving all their garbage behind . Even though this is a " No Alcohol Allowed " park , I pick up dozens of beer cans on my walks . Are beer drinkers exempt from using garbage cans ? Look at the bucolic scene above . There is a vehicle tire in the woods ! It was not there two days ago . It 's about 100 yards from the parking lot at the public picnic shelter . Someone went to all the trouble to bring their unwanted tire down here to the park , then roll it off into the woods . How I wish they had just propped it up next to the garbage can . Why hide it in the woods ? Another day I found a gas tank for a boat hidden in the forest behind the public restrooms . There is absolutely no way it could have washed up ashore there . We 've never had a flood here to reach those heights . In my utopia , we would have a hunter 's season on litter bugs . You could shoot to kill anyone who tosses their garbage out at nature rather than put it in a garbage can or bin . As for those thoughtful parents that leave their disgusting dirty baby diapers behind where ever they please , I wonder , areDearMissMermaid . Com Subscribe to Dear Miss Mermaid for 3 cents per day * Make A Donation * * Proceeds Help With Medical Mess Hurricanes and Hangovers By Dear Miss Mermaid Amazon ( Buy 2 , Ships Free ) or Gone Crazy Special $ 9 . 99 It 's 3am and I am wide awake drinking Hazelnut coffee laced with low fat milk . A storm has broken out complete with thunder , lightning , rumblings , mumblings and copious amounts of rain . I 've been feeling terribly weak and having to rest up often . Now I am trying to stay awake and get things done . So far , I 've managed to stare out the window monitoring the storm , while rubbing the sleepy puppy 's belly . My awning is still put away but my patio stuff is outside , so everything is getting soaked . I 'm not going out in the dark alone out here to cover it all up . The wild life hunts at night . I don 't wish to disturb them nor become part of the food chain . I enjoy strong dark coffee with nearly equal amounts of milk . When I was working in Venezuela , I became hooked on strong coffee . Many of my American friends choke on my coffee , preferring to add equal amounts of water to it before they add their own accouterments . Hazelnut coffee was deeply discounted at the store , so I bought some . Oh my gosh , what a treat that has turned out to be . It is wonderful stuff , tasting naturally sweet . I had no idea flavored coffee could be so delightful . I 've always shied away from flavored coffees preferred super strong black stuff that makes the spoon take notice and stand up straight . ( Some say my coffee can corrode a spoon . ) Hazelnuts are full of antioxidants , plus B and E vitamins . It 's used to flavor Frangelico too . My little old wheel estate came with an undercabinet Black and Decker coffee maker , that I found out was an option that Fleetwood installed . According to the coffeemaker manual , it is circa 1993 and still perking along nicely . I 'd love to have the new and improved undercabinet coffee maker by Black and Decker that now includes a thermal carafe . Mine just has the regular fragile glass carafe . Dream on ! I 'm going to have to sell a lot of lemonade or books or both . Black & Decker SDC850 SpaceMaker 8 - Cup Coffeemaker with Thermal Carafe I set up a lemonade stand on my blog , in the right column . : ) If anyone wants to buy lemonade , it goes to a great cause ! ( An eccentric recuperating mermaid . . . ) |
T and I took a trip to an island some where southeast of disorder . I took this picture of him laying on the beach . He looks so good , I had a hard time keeping the other homos on the beach from trying to pick him up . After hanging out on the beach for a while in the morning , we walked to the other side of the island where we could swim with the sea turtles . This was the time of the year when they gather on this remote island for breeding , so there were lots of them to look at . After snorkeling , we had lunch on the beach . After eating fresh fruit ( grown on the island ) and fish baked in palm leaves in the sand , we laid back together in an over - sized hammock for a nap in the shade of banana grove . After our nap , T wanted to try parasailing so we walked down the beach to where they do that . After a quick lesson , we strapped ourselves in and up , up and away . It was a beautiful day and from up there it felt like we could see the whole world . They took us around the island and no matter how beautiful the scenery was , I could not stop looking at T 's face . Seeing the wonder in his smile and the love in his eyes just made my heart melt . I could not help but lean over and kiss him . When we landed back on earth we poked around the local shops on that side of the island . I liked looking in the shops run by local craftsmen who make jewelery , and other personal items . I found a colorful hair - tie for my daughter . A shark took necklace for one of my sons and knotted bracelet worn by warriors of the local tribe for my other sons . I even found a nice necklace for K and a something cool for AJ . We had a nice dinner at a little cafe next to the beach . We ate scallops and shrimp while listening to the surf as the tide came in . We shared a frozen desert made from locally grown mangoes . As we finished our meal , the sun was just starting to set . We had a 10 minute walk down the beach to our room . Walking hand in hand we alternated between looking into each others eyes and looking out to sea . By the time we realized it , we had walked half a mile past the hotel . Oh well , I guess we will just have to walk back . I could not think of a more perfect place to be or a more perfect man to be with . One day , I hope to take a trip like this . Today was a really nice day in my neck of the woods . Not as nice as here , but pretty nice . I think it was the warmest day so far this year with the daytime high reaching 78 degrees with a nice breeze . I spent the first part of the day with K and the kids . We went to church and then we all went out to lunch . It was so nice we even are outside on the patio . ( If you are a northern reader who still has 3 feet of snow in your yard , please forgive me . ) After lunch a quick trip to Wally - World for supplies and then home . Then I got to thinking about vacations . K and AJ took a cruise over the week of Thanksgiving . ( She does not think that counts as a romantic vacation because AJ 's daughter went too . ( boo hoo ) ) . I want to have a vacation alone with T . I want to be able to go somewhere and not have to worry about anything other than him and me and making the most out of our time together . We had a really good time during the weekend we spent together over labor day , but that was only 2 nights and I really wanted more ( not to mention that he was sick for one of those nights ) . For now we see each other once or twice a week . Each visit is a few hours long and then we go home . I need to find a way to see him more often . If you have spent any extended time in the closet pretending to be someone else , you probably reached a point where you became comfortable with it . When you first looked in the mirror and saw that the reflection is not really you , it feels funny , strange . But that just strengthens your resolve . You don 't really like the man you really are . You want to be the man in the mirror . You want to be someone else . Over time you become good at pretending . You might even believe that you are straight . That you are like everyone else . You have been ignoring the man in the mirror for so long by now , you actually think he is you . As more time passes you realize that the man you see in the mirror is not you at all . You realize that the man in the mirror is a stranger . Someone you don 't know . Other people seem to know him , but not you . Whether you know it or not , this is the last day you can stay in the closet . You realize you cannot pretend anymore . You realize you have to be the person you really are . This is actually a familiar story to many of the people reading my blog or other blogs like it . I have written about it myself , though not exactly in this way before . The reason I bring it up is that K experienced exactly the same thing , at the same time I was . Her experience was different , she is sure of her sexual orientation , but really about her own happiness . While K and I have always gotten along pretty well , we have not had a perfect marriage . Then , I guess it was about seven years ago now , she let me explore my sexuality . She let me connect with men online and in person for sex . She knew what was going on , and she told me she was OK , but she was not . She told me the other day that she was so unhappy back then , she figured that if she could make everyone else happy ( me and the kids ) then she would some how become happy too . That is why she allowed me to explore when other wives would not . She thought it would make me happy , which in turn would make her happy . Now , today , she is finding her happiness with AJ . I am finding mine with T . She is looking in the mirror and suddenly recognizing the woman in the mirror . What is more surprising to her is the fact that she got so used to seeing that strange woman in the mirror that she had hard time remember that her own happiness was just as important as everyone else 's . It was a rough road for both of us to get where we are today . While we were in the most hellish part of it , there were times when we both thought it would be best to try to go back . To put things back the way they were . But now that we are each happy with the person we see in the mirror . there is no way we would go back . I have written before about my former neighbor , let 's call him " Shawn " . He came out to his wife and they divorced in a mess . He lived across the street from me when his wife moved out , taking the kids with her . He lived there for another year before be let the bank foreclose and he moved to a neighborhood a couple of miles away from me . All in all , I think he is a good guy who is fun to hang out with from time to time . A few years ago , he took me , and a group of others , to a gay strip club ( my first time ) . Shawn 's real problem is he has poor judgement . In addition to other things he participates risky sexual behavior . When I say " risky " I don 't mean just not using condoms ( I actually am not sure if he does or not ) but things that could actually get him killed . Here is an example : He found a guy on Craigslist that wanted to come over a perform oral sex on him . That 's not so strange , but Mr . Blowjob , told Shawn to leave his house unlocked and lay naked and blindfolded on his bed and wait there for him to arrive , service Shawn and then leave . Shawn claims he actually did this and told me later how cool it was . I told you , he has poor judgement . I don 't see Shawn very often , maybe every couple of months or so . During those meetings he frequently tells me stories of his exploits . I do not offer opinions , I just listen . Occasionally I wonder what it would be like to have his courage and freedom , but then I remind myself that I think he is kind of pathetic . By the end of the visit I generally feel sorry for him . He is adrift and I don 't think he even knows where he wants to go . While I may not have his freedom , I have T who truly loves me and helps keep me grounded . He knows I have never done most of the things he has done ( or claims to have done ) because I told him . Occasionally I have told him about fantasies I have thought about , but never acted on and a few that I have actually done . At one point , maybe a year or two ago , I told him that I have always wondered what it would be like to be with 2 or 3 other men at the same time . This past Sunday , he sent me a text asking if I wanted to stop over his house later that evening . I told him I would . He said he had someone he wanted me to meet . That sounded interesting . I have meet his friends before and generally they have been fun to hang out with . I got my chores done around the house including getting the kids ready for school the next day and off to bed . K works at the church on Sunday nights so when she got home , I got dressed and headed out to my car . I called Shawn to let him know I was on my way over and would be there in 5 min . I asked him if his friend was there . He said there were 2 friends and they were on their way . The he asked what I thought about having a 4 way with him and them . After all I had told him I always wanted to try that . Ummmm . . . . Like I said , Shawn was always telling me about his exploits , but I have never been a participant , or even a witness for that matter . I have never really wanted to be either . I think his stories are sleezy and they are not me . Even if I was not already committed to T , I would not be interested in actually getting involved with him , or his friends . Now I had told both K and T that I was going over to Shawn 's house . I had not left my driveway when it became clear what he was planning . I told him I was not going to come over and made it clear I was not interesting in participating but he could tell me all about it later if he wanted to . I got out of the car and headed back into the house . I had been out in the driveway for about 5 min . When K asked me why I was back so soon , I told her that Shawn had developed a migraine and canceled . I then told T the same thing . I probably should have told them the truth , but I didn 't want them to think badly of Shawn . I am not sure why Shawn thought I would be interested in a 4 way with him . I think if I made a pass at him , he would probably take me up on it , but I never have . I never would either . Of course the first reason is that I am committed to T . Even if I was not , Shawn 's risky behavior would make me concerned that he might have disease . Add that to the fact I do not find him attractive and , well you get the idea . Well , anyway , I don 't expect I will hear from Shawn for a while . I think he was embarrassed that he was setting this up for me and I didn 't accept , especially since I was not that nice about it . I may have lost an occasional friend , but I have kept my integrity intact . Last night I woke in the night . Without my glasses I cannot really see the clock so I am not sure what time it is . The windows are open and I can hear crickets in the woods beyond our yard . The only other sound I hear is your breathing . I put on my glasses to look at the clock , but I my eyes are drawn to the moonlight cascading on your body . You shift slightly but you remain asleep as I prop myself up on my elbow . Even though I know every curve and contour of your body , I cannot take my eyes off you . I focus on your chest . Your smooth skin almost seems to glow in the moonlight . I watch it rise and fall as your breathe . It is almost hypnotic . Up . Down . Up . Down . My eyes move up to your face . I focus on your lips . I can almost feel the softness of them pressing on mine . I notice there is a little stubble growing on your chin , now I can feel it scratching gently on my chin as we kiss in my mind . I lean over and touch my lips to yours . You return my kiss without waking up , almost instinctively . This has actually turned into a busy weekend . My sister , her husband and their 2 kids are here for a visit . They are not sleeping at my house ( there 's really no room ) , but they are spending most of their time with us . I usually only get to see them once a year when I am home at summer time . Since we don 't get that many visitors , it is really nice when someone come here to visit . I am glad that she came , and even though it is pretty low key , I am enjoying their visit . The visit is going well , but my kids are not behaving as well as I would like . The younger two are always fighting , but this weekend it seems like it is more . Or at least it is bugging me more . K has not been around much , partly due to work but also because of recreational activities . In fairness she did take the kids to the horse barn and let them take turns riding . She likes to do that , so that worked out pretty well . Last night , T came to spend the evening with us . We all went to a pizza place the kids like for dinner and then to a movie . Again everything went well , but as soon as the movie was over , T left . While I am glad he came , I wished he had stayed a little longer . I know he left so I could focus more attention on my sister and nephews , and I know he thought he was being considerate , I still wish he would have stayed longer . But , on the other hand , I am glad he came at all . I guess I should consider my glass to be half full . The movie we saw tonight was Gnomeo & Juliet . As I kissed T good night , all I could think about was the line from the actual Shakespeare play : " Good night , good night ! Parting is such sweet sorrow , There are things that you know are just right . They seem natural . They fit you . You cannot imagine that you were ever any other way . When I look back at the person I was pretending to be for so long and then I look at where I am today , I sometimes have a hard time seeing the man I once was . Not that I am really that different . I was with T tonight . I went to his house and had dinner with his family . They all talked around me in a language I do not yet understand . T would tell me the topic of their conversation from time to time , but mostly I was there alone . When the meal was over , we went up stairs . He bought home several boxes of work from the office . I had bought my work computer with me too . I have a big presentation to give on Thursday that still needs work . We sat on the floor in his loft and we each did our own work . Occasionally stopping to chat or kiss . I could tell I was exactly where I needed to be . I was with the person I needed to be with . Just being with him was enough . We were not even sitting close together , but I still felt close to him . Back in December I wrote about how I really dislike sleeping alone ( here ) . For most of the past twenty years , K and I slept together as most married couples do . I liked it , though sometimes she would complain I snore too much . For the past 9 months I have been sleeping alone . While it is not my favorite , I still sleep pretty well . I sometimes get up in the night to use the bathroom , but I always immediately fall back to sleep . Occasionally , I will wake up , usually from a dream , and my mind is active and I can 't get back to a proper sleep . I experience kind of an intermittent sleep . You know the when you look at the clock and it 's 3 : 00 , then you sleep and you look again and it 's only 3 : 15 . Ugh ! ! I woke up at 3 : 00 , but as I was trying to go back to sleep , I woke with a start . I don 't know why , but I was anxious and I really could not go back to sleep . It was not a very fun feeling . I was uneasy and I think I felt worse because I was alone . I drank from the water bottle I keep next to the bed . No . So there I was . Wide awake , just like this guy . I gave up on the Blackberry and opened my laptop on my bed , surfing around until I heard the alarm on my son 's room go off just before 6 : 00 . CRAP ! ! It was about time for me to get up and get ready for work anyway . I was tired and cranky all day . I am still more than a little anxious and I don 't know why . Let 's hope tonight is better . It may seem strange , but I am friends with AJ on Facebook . This was the status he posted the other day . I don 't know if he made it up or read it some where . I thought it was interesting because not only does it equally apply to him and me , it also applies to a lot of my blogger friends . A lot of the stress , fear and uncertainty that guys like us ( or at least guys like me ) is about the transition from our old life to our new life . Compounding the fear , is the fact that most of society is not entirely supportive of gays in general , much less gays who appear to be abandoning their families . What I thought was particularly significant to me , was the part about " . . . even the most longed for . . . " This made me think about my laundry room moment ( read about that here ) and the life that I longed for for so long . The straight married life that I had and the gay life that I wanted were inherently incompatible . When I look at the quote it talks about dying in one life before entering another . At first I didn 't like the sound of that , kinda melodramatic . But as I thought about it more , it might be right . There is a huge shift from my old life to my new life . Even though I have been doing it in slow motion , I am still making the shift . AJ is making a shift too . His first wife passed away 3 years ago after a very long illness . He still has a fair amount of survivor guilt . I , on the other hand , have homo guilt . We both have to put our old lives ( and guilt ) behind us in order to embrace th new one life . K was gone at a tournament all day Saturday and was not to get home until late . The plan was for T to come over to my house . I was going to make a nice dinner for him and my kids and then we would all go see a movie . Things started to fall apart . Yesterday , my kids lobbied hard that we should go out for pizza . ( They are not always big fans of my cooking ) . My daughter was complaining of a sore throat that turned out to be strep . After getting her medication I knew she would not be able to go to the movies . As the afternoon wore on , it was clear that she felt worse . When we are together , I just feel the feelings . It does not matter what we are doing , I feel them , just the same . All I need is your body close to mine and I can feel the feelings . Over the years I often wondered about the stories of the guys doing crazy things for love . I did not understand how the love of a woman could make a man do crazy things . I did not feel the tingles in my belly that being " in love " with one special person was supposed to bring . I knew how to make it appear to others like I had those feelings , but I did not really experience them for myself . That is , not until you came along . Once you came into my life , I learned what all the brew - ha - ha was about . I learned what in love felt like . I learned that I could not longer live the lie . I could never go back to who I was . I could only move forward and be the person I truly am . Falling in love with you was my great awaking . Now when you are lounging in my arms , I just feel the feelings . I know I am where I belong . In a comment on my last post Biki said , " Good luck , and remember , you are trying to untie yourself from K , not make more strings . . . " Is that really what I am trying to do ? Maybe my concerns are not really about the kids at all , maybe they are about losing K . After all she has been a constant in my life for 20 years and we are resolved to remain best friends . It is probably normal that I would not want to distance myself from her . Four people , including T , have told me that my ( our ) plan to stay connected is not a good one . They are telling me that I should be working to make myself more independent and separate from K . I need to think about this more before I have much more to say . But as I am thinking , I have to remember something . With only 2 or 3 exceptions , everyone , and I mean EVERYONE K has told that we are divorcing because I am gay , has told her she is crazy for letting me continue to live here . That she is crazy for not kicking me out and hiring a scumbag lawyer the first day she found out I had " turned gay " . They said she was stupid for not suing the shit out of me . Some even suggested that she should cut me off from my kids . To her credit , she has rejected everyone of those suggestions . Because we have a special relationship . We have a special bond that seems to flow past this gay business . I firmly believe that even given how much she has fallen in love with AJ , if he were to suddenly develop a hostility to me , she would end the relationship with him . It would be a deal breaker for her . All that said , maybe there is something to giving her ( and me ) more space than we are currently planning . Maybe it will be better for all of us . It 's late so there may be more typing mistakes than usual . I need to sleep and think about this more . The current living arrangement that K and I have is not sustainable over the long term . I had hoped we would be able to put up with it until she finished school in 2 years , but it is becoming more and more apparent , that we will not make it that long . So K and I have been talking about what kind of situation we want to live in . Because AJ , is in her long range plan , she has been talking about it with him too . K would also like to have several acres of land so she can bring her horse too , which would same her a fair chunk of money . This time last year , before she met AJ , we assumed we would buy property together and live together with the kids . We would not necessarily live in the same house , but on the same property . Now that AJ is in the picture , they are talking about buying together and I would basically rent from them , at least as long as my kids are young . As they grow up and move away , I will probably too , leaving K and AJ to live there together . So K has been talking to me about what I want , need and could accept . She has been talking to AJ about what he wants , needs , or could accept . Last night the three of us got together to talk about it . Another option is the Katrina Cottage . ( No kidding . Look here ) These are little houses that can be built most anywhere and many of them would be perfect for me . This could be built on the same property as the house K & AJ and the kids live in . It would give me easy access to the kids and them easy access to me . At the same time it would give me and K the privacy we deserve . T could come over and we could watch TV on my couch , in my living room . Then we could sit out on my porch on a warm summer evening to look at the stars before retiring to my bedroom to fall asleep in each others arms . I really like this option . Next would be the in - law apartment . A small one bedroom apartment attached to the main house . It may , or may not have it 's own entrance . I probably don 't need a full kitchen . This would cost more than just a bedroom , but less than a free standing cottage . I think I would get the privacy I need here along with the feeling of family that I want . All of these options are short term . Eventually ( I hope and pray ) T and I will live together as partners ( as husbands ? ) and I doubt he will want to leave his fabulous house to move into my cottage . I don 't know what that will look like for us ( or really even if , but I keep hoping ) but the reality is I will not live in the cottage on K 's horse farm forever . A cottage or a self - contained in - law apartment would be best for them because they could rent it and make a little extra money that way . Alternatively , it could be a place that my middle son , who is partially disabled , could live , because he may not be able to live on his own easily . I think that AJ is leaning toward the apartment or the cottage choice . While he is a good sport and pretty accepting of me , I think the limit might be reached if I am actually living in his house ( or rather his and K 's house ) . Right now I don 't know how much he will want he hanging around all the time . I can 't really blame him for that and to be fair , he has been very accepting of our fucked up situation . This then makes me think about my kids . I strongly feel that connections are forged and maintained best by frequent and close physical proximity . I know I have a connection with the kids that will last forever . I do not worry the kids , even the youngest ones , will eventually come to see AJ as their dad rather than me . I know that K will not let that happen and there really is not indication that AJ is eager to sign up for parenting responsibilities for my kids anyway . But I think about it anyway . If I am not around and lot as they are growing up , will those relationships not be as strong ? I also wonder if they will get better . K will be living with them all the time ( with me in the apartment or cottage ) and she will be doing the day to day discipline . Maybe they will see me as the " good parent " because I will be calmer and do less yelling . Hmmm . On the other hand , it 's not like I am moving out of state . If I am living in a cottage 100 feet away from the main house , it should be pretty easy to maintain a connection to the kids . And to K . I am sure I am reading more into all of this than I need to . I also know there is a lot that needs to happen before anything can happen . Both AJ and I need to sell our houses . Even in today 's market , we both have some equity in our houses . Proceeds from the sale of his house will buy the property . Money from the sale of mine will go to building my cottage . There is still a fair amount of work to do to figure out the logistics of all of this , but we will figure it out . I 'll keep you posted . Sometimes I take comfort in things that are familiar . Tonight , beer and pizza is my vice . When I was in college I used to drink a lot . Too much , really . After college , I moved in with my best friend from high school ( let 's call him Steve ) and we always had beer in the fridge and we drank a lot of it . This time was about the time I met K and I was deep , deep in the closet and in denial about who I am . ( Before you ask , nothing ever happened with Steve . ) I don 't really know why I drank so much , but we ( Steve and I ) both did . We also ate a lot of pizza , mostly because neither of us knew how to cook . I had a good time living there . We were both single with no real responsibility expect to pay our rent every month . I did not even have a real bed , just a mattress on the floor and that was OK with me . I guess things were just simple then . Today I do not drink very much . I will have a beer or two with dinner when I go out or if I have company over to the house , but except for that , I generally do not drink at home . The kids like pizza so we get that a lot , more than we should . Tonight I am trying to take some comfort in pizza and beer . I was supposed to see T last night , but that did not work out . I was not anyone 's fault , it 's just that life got in the way . Tonight his parents return from being away for a month , so he is spending some time with them ( as he should ) . Tomorrow he is singing at an event for veterans of the Vietnam war . More on that here . So tonight I am a little melancholy . K has gone to spend the evening , and the night , with AJ . I don 't know when I will see T again . I am feeling lonely and sad . In the end , I ate some pizza and drank two beers . It took me several hours to drink them so there was no " chemical " effect tonight . Now I finally have the kids in bed . Nothing left for me to do now but go to sleep and dream of when I can . . . I picked up T at his office yesterday after work . He was ready for me . At first I thought we were going to have dinner with his sister , but she decided that she was too tired and she went home . I had him all to myself . As I drove him home he told me about the employee he had to fired that day . He was not feeling good about it and wanted to talk about . I listened , sometimes asking questions or offering opinions . The details are not important . I was thinking about the big picture and what I was seeing was the man I love , who was telling me about the hard day he just had a work . ( melt ) This is one of those moments that I dream about for us . We stopped at a noodle place and ate a quick dinner for 2 . Then we went back to his house and watched some TV . We were sitting , melted together , occasionally turning steal a quick kiss from the other . I am gay man in his 40 's who was married for 18 years to a straight woman , who is still my very best friend . We have 4 children together . She is now remarried and we still want to be supportive of each other and make a stable family for our kids . T : My ex - boyfriend . We were together from 2008 to 2013 . He is still an important person in my life . AJ : K 's new husband . They got married December 2011 . Most of the images used in my blog I found floating around the Internet . I believe , in good faith , that they are either public domain , or my non - commercial use falls under fair use guidelines . If , however , you are the are the copyright owner of any image and wish me to remove it , please contact me and I will do so as quickly as possible |
T and I took a trip to an island some where southeast of disorder . I took this picture of him laying on the beach . He looks so good , I had a hard time keeping the other homos on the beach from trying to pick him up . After hanging out on the beach for a while in the morning , we walked to the other side of the island where we could swim with the sea turtles . This was the time of the year when they gather on this remote island for breeding , so there were lots of them to look at . After snorkeling , we had lunch on the beach . After eating fresh fruit ( grown on the island ) and fish baked in palm leaves in the sand , we laid back together in an over - sized hammock for a nap in the shade of banana grove . After our nap , T wanted to try parasailing so we walked down the beach to where they do that . After a quick lesson , we strapped ourselves in and up , up and away . It was a beautiful day and from up there it felt like we could see the whole world . They took us around the island and no matter how beautiful the scenery was , I could not stop looking at T 's face . Seeing the wonder in his smile and the love in his eyes just made my heart melt . I could not help but lean over and kiss him . When we landed back on earth we poked around the local shops on that side of the island . I liked looking in the shops run by local craftsmen who make jewelery , and other personal items . I found a colorful hair - tie for my daughter . A shark took necklace for one of my sons and knotted bracelet worn by warriors of the local tribe for my other sons . I even found a nice necklace for K and a something cool for AJ . We had a nice dinner at a little cafe next to the beach . We ate scallops and shrimp while listening to the surf as the tide came in . We shared a frozen desert made from locally grown mangoes . As we finished our meal , the sun was just starting to set . We had a 10 minute walk down the beach to our room . Walking hand in hand we alternated between looking into each others eyes and looking out to sea . By the time we realized it , we had walked half a mile past the hotel . Oh well , I guess we will just have to walk back . I could not think of a more perfect place to be or a more perfect man to be with . One day , I hope to take a trip like this . Today was a really nice day in my neck of the woods . Not as nice as here , but pretty nice . I think it was the warmest day so far this year with the daytime high reaching 78 degrees with a nice breeze . I spent the first part of the day with K and the kids . We went to church and then we all went out to lunch . It was so nice we even are outside on the patio . ( If you are a northern reader who still has 3 feet of snow in your yard , please forgive me . ) After lunch a quick trip to Wally - World for supplies and then home . Then I got to thinking about vacations . K and AJ took a cruise over the week of Thanksgiving . ( She does not think that counts as a romantic vacation because AJ 's daughter went too . ( boo hoo ) ) . I want to have a vacation alone with T . I want to be able to go somewhere and not have to worry about anything other than him and me and making the most out of our time together . We had a really good time during the weekend we spent together over labor day , but that was only 2 nights and I really wanted more ( not to mention that he was sick for one of those nights ) . For now we see each other once or twice a week . Each visit is a few hours long and then we go home . I need to find a way to see him more often . If you have spent any extended time in the closet pretending to be someone else , you probably reached a point where you became comfortable with it . When you first looked in the mirror and saw that the reflection is not really you , it feels funny , strange . But that just strengthens your resolve . You don 't really like the man you really are . You want to be the man in the mirror . You want to be someone else . Over time you become good at pretending . You might even believe that you are straight . That you are like everyone else . You have been ignoring the man in the mirror for so long by now , you actually think he is you . As more time passes you realize that the man you see in the mirror is not you at all . You realize that the man in the mirror is a stranger . Someone you don 't know . Other people seem to know him , but not you . Whether you know it or not , this is the last day you can stay in the closet . You realize you cannot pretend anymore . You realize you have to be the person you really are . This is actually a familiar story to many of the people reading my blog or other blogs like it . I have written about it myself , though not exactly in this way before . The reason I bring it up is that K experienced exactly the same thing , at the same time I was . Her experience was different , she is sure of her sexual orientation , but really about her own happiness . While K and I have always gotten along pretty well , we have not had a perfect marriage . Then , I guess it was about seven years ago now , she let me explore my sexuality . She let me connect with men online and in person for sex . She knew what was going on , and she told me she was OK , but she was not . She told me the other day that she was so unhappy back then , she figured that if she could make everyone else happy ( me and the kids ) then she would some how become happy too . That is why she allowed me to explore when other wives would not . She thought it would make me happy , which in turn would make her happy . Now , today , she is finding her happiness with AJ . I am finding mine with T . She is looking in the mirror and suddenly recognizing the woman in the mirror . What is more surprising to her is the fact that she got so used to seeing that strange woman in the mirror that she had hard time remember that her own happiness was just as important as everyone else 's . It was a rough road for both of us to get where we are today . While we were in the most hellish part of it , there were times when we both thought it would be best to try to go back . To put things back the way they were . But now that we are each happy with the person we see in the mirror . there is no way we would go back . I have written before about my former neighbor , let 's call him " Shawn " . He came out to his wife and they divorced in a mess . He lived across the street from me when his wife moved out , taking the kids with her . He lived there for another year before be let the bank foreclose and he moved to a neighborhood a couple of miles away from me . All in all , I think he is a good guy who is fun to hang out with from time to time . A few years ago , he took me , and a group of others , to a gay strip club ( my first time ) . Shawn 's real problem is he has poor judgement . In addition to other things he participates risky sexual behavior . When I say " risky " I don 't mean just not using condoms ( I actually am not sure if he does or not ) but things that could actually get him killed . Here is an example : He found a guy on Craigslist that wanted to come over a perform oral sex on him . That 's not so strange , but Mr . Blowjob , told Shawn to leave his house unlocked and lay naked and blindfolded on his bed and wait there for him to arrive , service Shawn and then leave . Shawn claims he actually did this and told me later how cool it was . I told you , he has poor judgement . I don 't see Shawn very often , maybe every couple of months or so . During those meetings he frequently tells me stories of his exploits . I do not offer opinions , I just listen . Occasionally I wonder what it would be like to have his courage and freedom , but then I remind myself that I think he is kind of pathetic . By the end of the visit I generally feel sorry for him . He is adrift and I don 't think he even knows where he wants to go . While I may not have his freedom , I have T who truly loves me and helps keep me grounded . He knows I have never done most of the things he has done ( or claims to have done ) because I told him . Occasionally I have told him about fantasies I have thought about , but never acted on and a few that I have actually done . At one point , maybe a year or two ago , I told him that I have always wondered what it would be like to be with 2 or 3 other men at the same time . This past Sunday , he sent me a text asking if I wanted to stop over his house later that evening . I told him I would . He said he had someone he wanted me to meet . That sounded interesting . I have meet his friends before and generally they have been fun to hang out with . I got my chores done around the house including getting the kids ready for school the next day and off to bed . K works at the church on Sunday nights so when she got home , I got dressed and headed out to my car . I called Shawn to let him know I was on my way over and would be there in 5 min . I asked him if his friend was there . He said there were 2 friends and they were on their way . The he asked what I thought about having a 4 way with him and them . After all I had told him I always wanted to try that . Ummmm . . . . Like I said , Shawn was always telling me about his exploits , but I have never been a participant , or even a witness for that matter . I have never really wanted to be either . I think his stories are sleezy and they are not me . Even if I was not already committed to T , I would not be interested in actually getting involved with him , or his friends . Now I had told both K and T that I was going over to Shawn 's house . I had not left my driveway when it became clear what he was planning . I told him I was not going to come over and made it clear I was not interesting in participating but he could tell me all about it later if he wanted to . I got out of the car and headed back into the house . I had been out in the driveway for about 5 min . When K asked me why I was back so soon , I told her that Shawn had developed a migraine and canceled . I then told T the same thing . I probably should have told them the truth , but I didn 't want them to think badly of Shawn . I am not sure why Shawn thought I would be interested in a 4 way with him . I think if I made a pass at him , he would probably take me up on it , but I never have . I never would either . Of course the first reason is that I am committed to T . Even if I was not , Shawn 's risky behavior would make me concerned that he might have disease . Add that to the fact I do not find him attractive and , well you get the idea . Well , anyway , I don 't expect I will hear from Shawn for a while . I think he was embarrassed that he was setting this up for me and I didn 't accept , especially since I was not that nice about it . I may have lost an occasional friend , but I have kept my integrity intact . Last night I woke in the night . Without my glasses I cannot really see the clock so I am not sure what time it is . The windows are open and I can hear crickets in the woods beyond our yard . The only other sound I hear is your breathing . I put on my glasses to look at the clock , but I my eyes are drawn to the moonlight cascading on your body . You shift slightly but you remain asleep as I prop myself up on my elbow . Even though I know every curve and contour of your body , I cannot take my eyes off you . I focus on your chest . Your smooth skin almost seems to glow in the moonlight . I watch it rise and fall as your breathe . It is almost hypnotic . Up . Down . Up . Down . My eyes move up to your face . I focus on your lips . I can almost feel the softness of them pressing on mine . I notice there is a little stubble growing on your chin , now I can feel it scratching gently on my chin as we kiss in my mind . I lean over and touch my lips to yours . You return my kiss without waking up , almost instinctively . This has actually turned into a busy weekend . My sister , her husband and their 2 kids are here for a visit . They are not sleeping at my house ( there 's really no room ) , but they are spending most of their time with us . I usually only get to see them once a year when I am home at summer time . Since we don 't get that many visitors , it is really nice when someone come here to visit . I am glad that she came , and even though it is pretty low key , I am enjoying their visit . The visit is going well , but my kids are not behaving as well as I would like . The younger two are always fighting , but this weekend it seems like it is more . Or at least it is bugging me more . K has not been around much , partly due to work but also because of recreational activities . In fairness she did take the kids to the horse barn and let them take turns riding . She likes to do that , so that worked out pretty well . Last night , T came to spend the evening with us . We all went to a pizza place the kids like for dinner and then to a movie . Again everything went well , but as soon as the movie was over , T left . While I am glad he came , I wished he had stayed a little longer . I know he left so I could focus more attention on my sister and nephews , and I know he thought he was being considerate , I still wish he would have stayed longer . But , on the other hand , I am glad he came at all . I guess I should consider my glass to be half full . The movie we saw tonight was Gnomeo & Juliet . As I kissed T good night , all I could think about was the line from the actual Shakespeare play : " Good night , good night ! Parting is such sweet sorrow , There are things that you know are just right . They seem natural . They fit you . You cannot imagine that you were ever any other way . When I look back at the person I was pretending to be for so long and then I look at where I am today , I sometimes have a hard time seeing the man I once was . Not that I am really that different . I was with T tonight . I went to his house and had dinner with his family . They all talked around me in a language I do not yet understand . T would tell me the topic of their conversation from time to time , but mostly I was there alone . When the meal was over , we went up stairs . He bought home several boxes of work from the office . I had bought my work computer with me too . I have a big presentation to give on Thursday that still needs work . We sat on the floor in his loft and we each did our own work . Occasionally stopping to chat or kiss . I could tell I was exactly where I needed to be . I was with the person I needed to be with . Just being with him was enough . We were not even sitting close together , but I still felt close to him . Back in December I wrote about how I really dislike sleeping alone ( here ) . For most of the past twenty years , K and I slept together as most married couples do . I liked it , though sometimes she would complain I snore too much . For the past 9 months I have been sleeping alone . While it is not my favorite , I still sleep pretty well . I sometimes get up in the night to use the bathroom , but I always immediately fall back to sleep . Occasionally , I will wake up , usually from a dream , and my mind is active and I can 't get back to a proper sleep . I experience kind of an intermittent sleep . You know the when you look at the clock and it 's 3 : 00 , then you sleep and you look again and it 's only 3 : 15 . Ugh ! ! I woke up at 3 : 00 , but as I was trying to go back to sleep , I woke with a start . I don 't know why , but I was anxious and I really could not go back to sleep . It was not a very fun feeling . I was uneasy and I think I felt worse because I was alone . I drank from the water bottle I keep next to the bed . No . So there I was . Wide awake , just like this guy . I gave up on the Blackberry and opened my laptop on my bed , surfing around until I heard the alarm on my son 's room go off just before 6 : 00 . CRAP ! ! It was about time for me to get up and get ready for work anyway . I was tired and cranky all day . I am still more than a little anxious and I don 't know why . Let 's hope tonight is better . It may seem strange , but I am friends with AJ on Facebook . This was the status he posted the other day . I don 't know if he made it up or read it some where . I thought it was interesting because not only does it equally apply to him and me , it also applies to a lot of my blogger friends . A lot of the stress , fear and uncertainty that guys like us ( or at least guys like me ) is about the transition from our old life to our new life . Compounding the fear , is the fact that most of society is not entirely supportive of gays in general , much less gays who appear to be abandoning their families . What I thought was particularly significant to me , was the part about " . . . even the most longed for . . . " This made me think about my laundry room moment ( read about that here ) and the life that I longed for for so long . The straight married life that I had and the gay life that I wanted were inherently incompatible . When I look at the quote it talks about dying in one life before entering another . At first I didn 't like the sound of that , kinda melodramatic . But as I thought about it more , it might be right . There is a huge shift from my old life to my new life . Even though I have been doing it in slow motion , I am still making the shift . AJ is making a shift too . His first wife passed away 3 years ago after a very long illness . He still has a fair amount of survivor guilt . I , on the other hand , have homo guilt . We both have to put our old lives ( and guilt ) behind us in order to embrace th new one life . K was gone at a tournament all day Saturday and was not to get home until late . The plan was for T to come over to my house . I was going to make a nice dinner for him and my kids and then we would all go see a movie . Things started to fall apart . Yesterday , my kids lobbied hard that we should go out for pizza . ( They are not always big fans of my cooking ) . My daughter was complaining of a sore throat that turned out to be strep . After getting her medication I knew she would not be able to go to the movies . As the afternoon wore on , it was clear that she felt worse . When we are together , I just feel the feelings . It does not matter what we are doing , I feel them , just the same . All I need is your body close to mine and I can feel the feelings . Over the years I often wondered about the stories of the guys doing crazy things for love . I did not understand how the love of a woman could make a man do crazy things . I did not feel the tingles in my belly that being " in love " with one special person was supposed to bring . I knew how to make it appear to others like I had those feelings , but I did not really experience them for myself . That is , not until you came along . Once you came into my life , I learned what all the brew - ha - ha was about . I learned what in love felt like . I learned that I could not longer live the lie . I could never go back to who I was . I could only move forward and be the person I truly am . Falling in love with you was my great awaking . Now when you are lounging in my arms , I just feel the feelings . I know I am where I belong . In a comment on my last post Biki said , " Good luck , and remember , you are trying to untie yourself from K , not make more strings . . . " Is that really what I am trying to do ? Maybe my concerns are not really about the kids at all , maybe they are about losing K . After all she has been a constant in my life for 20 years and we are resolved to remain best friends . It is probably normal that I would not want to distance myself from her . Four people , including T , have told me that my ( our ) plan to stay connected is not a good one . They are telling me that I should be working to make myself more independent and separate from K . I need to think about this more before I have much more to say . But as I am thinking , I have to remember something . With only 2 or 3 exceptions , everyone , and I mean EVERYONE K has told that we are divorcing because I am gay , has told her she is crazy for letting me continue to live here . That she is crazy for not kicking me out and hiring a scumbag lawyer the first day she found out I had " turned gay " . They said she was stupid for not suing the shit out of me . Some even suggested that she should cut me off from my kids . To her credit , she has rejected everyone of those suggestions . Because we have a special relationship . We have a special bond that seems to flow past this gay business . I firmly believe that even given how much she has fallen in love with AJ , if he were to suddenly develop a hostility to me , she would end the relationship with him . It would be a deal breaker for her . All that said , maybe there is something to giving her ( and me ) more space than we are currently planning . Maybe it will be better for all of us . It 's late so there may be more typing mistakes than usual . I need to sleep and think about this more . The current living arrangement that K and I have is not sustainable over the long term . I had hoped we would be able to put up with it until she finished school in 2 years , but it is becoming more and more apparent , that we will not make it that long . So K and I have been talking about what kind of situation we want to live in . Because AJ , is in her long range plan , she has been talking about it with him too . K would also like to have several acres of land so she can bring her horse too , which would same her a fair chunk of money . This time last year , before she met AJ , we assumed we would buy property together and live together with the kids . We would not necessarily live in the same house , but on the same property . Now that AJ is in the picture , they are talking about buying together and I would basically rent from them , at least as long as my kids are young . As they grow up and move away , I will probably too , leaving K and AJ to live there together . So K has been talking to me about what I want , need and could accept . She has been talking to AJ about what he wants , needs , or could accept . Last night the three of us got together to talk about it . Another option is the Katrina Cottage . ( No kidding . Look here ) These are little houses that can be built most anywhere and many of them would be perfect for me . This could be built on the same property as the house K & AJ and the kids live in . It would give me easy access to the kids and them easy access to me . At the same time it would give me and K the privacy we deserve . T could come over and we could watch TV on my couch , in my living room . Then we could sit out on my porch on a warm summer evening to look at the stars before retiring to my bedroom to fall asleep in each others arms . I really like this option . Next would be the in - law apartment . A small one bedroom apartment attached to the main house . It may , or may not have it 's own entrance . I probably don 't need a full kitchen . This would cost more than just a bedroom , but less than a free standing cottage . I think I would get the privacy I need here along with the feeling of family that I want . All of these options are short term . Eventually ( I hope and pray ) T and I will live together as partners ( as husbands ? ) and I doubt he will want to leave his fabulous house to move into my cottage . I don 't know what that will look like for us ( or really even if , but I keep hoping ) but the reality is I will not live in the cottage on K 's horse farm forever . A cottage or a self - contained in - law apartment would be best for them because they could rent it and make a little extra money that way . Alternatively , it could be a place that my middle son , who is partially disabled , could live , because he may not be able to live on his own easily . I think that AJ is leaning toward the apartment or the cottage choice . While he is a good sport and pretty accepting of me , I think the limit might be reached if I am actually living in his house ( or rather his and K 's house ) . Right now I don 't know how much he will want he hanging around all the time . I can 't really blame him for that and to be fair , he has been very accepting of our fucked up situation . This then makes me think about my kids . I strongly feel that connections are forged and maintained best by frequent and close physical proximity . I know I have a connection with the kids that will last forever . I do not worry the kids , even the youngest ones , will eventually come to see AJ as their dad rather than me . I know that K will not let that happen and there really is not indication that AJ is eager to sign up for parenting responsibilities for my kids anyway . But I think about it anyway . If I am not around and lot as they are growing up , will those relationships not be as strong ? I also wonder if they will get better . K will be living with them all the time ( with me in the apartment or cottage ) and she will be doing the day to day discipline . Maybe they will see me as the " good parent " because I will be calmer and do less yelling . Hmmm . On the other hand , it 's not like I am moving out of state . If I am living in a cottage 100 feet away from the main house , it should be pretty easy to maintain a connection to the kids . And to K . I am sure I am reading more into all of this than I need to . I also know there is a lot that needs to happen before anything can happen . Both AJ and I need to sell our houses . Even in today 's market , we both have some equity in our houses . Proceeds from the sale of his house will buy the property . Money from the sale of mine will go to building my cottage . There is still a fair amount of work to do to figure out the logistics of all of this , but we will figure it out . I 'll keep you posted . Sometimes I take comfort in things that are familiar . Tonight , beer and pizza is my vice . When I was in college I used to drink a lot . Too much , really . After college , I moved in with my best friend from high school ( let 's call him Steve ) and we always had beer in the fridge and we drank a lot of it . This time was about the time I met K and I was deep , deep in the closet and in denial about who I am . ( Before you ask , nothing ever happened with Steve . ) I don 't really know why I drank so much , but we ( Steve and I ) both did . We also ate a lot of pizza , mostly because neither of us knew how to cook . I had a good time living there . We were both single with no real responsibility expect to pay our rent every month . I did not even have a real bed , just a mattress on the floor and that was OK with me . I guess things were just simple then . Today I do not drink very much . I will have a beer or two with dinner when I go out or if I have company over to the house , but except for that , I generally do not drink at home . The kids like pizza so we get that a lot , more than we should . Tonight I am trying to take some comfort in pizza and beer . I was supposed to see T last night , but that did not work out . I was not anyone 's fault , it 's just that life got in the way . Tonight his parents return from being away for a month , so he is spending some time with them ( as he should ) . Tomorrow he is singing at an event for veterans of the Vietnam war . More on that here . So tonight I am a little melancholy . K has gone to spend the evening , and the night , with AJ . I don 't know when I will see T again . I am feeling lonely and sad . In the end , I ate some pizza and drank two beers . It took me several hours to drink them so there was no " chemical " effect tonight . Now I finally have the kids in bed . Nothing left for me to do now but go to sleep and dream of when I can . . . I picked up T at his office yesterday after work . He was ready for me . At first I thought we were going to have dinner with his sister , but she decided that she was too tired and she went home . I had him all to myself . As I drove him home he told me about the employee he had to fired that day . He was not feeling good about it and wanted to talk about . I listened , sometimes asking questions or offering opinions . The details are not important . I was thinking about the big picture and what I was seeing was the man I love , who was telling me about the hard day he just had a work . ( melt ) This is one of those moments that I dream about for us . We stopped at a noodle place and ate a quick dinner for 2 . Then we went back to his house and watched some TV . We were sitting , melted together , occasionally turning steal a quick kiss from the other . I am gay man in his 40 's who was married for 18 years to a straight woman , who is still my very best friend . We have 4 children together . She is now remarried and we still want to be supportive of each other and make a stable family for our kids . T : My ex - boyfriend . We were together from 2008 to 2013 . He is still an important person in my life . AJ : K 's new husband . They got married December 2011 . Most of the images used in my blog I found floating around the Internet . I believe , in good faith , that they are either public domain , or my non - commercial use falls under fair use guidelines . If , however , you are the are the copyright owner of any image and wish me to remove it , please contact me and I will do so as quickly as possible |
I was a small girl when my mother died . It was snowing that day , and my father held me in his arms . I watched as they lowered the body of my mother into the frozen ground , and my heart was broken . Since I could remember , my mother had been my mentor , my life . She had taught me to sew , to cook , to gather eggs , and , believe it or not , to be a lady . My father was the Warden of the Skara woods . His name was Greyson LeFay , but the local people all called him TideHawke . He was a ranger , a man of the forest . He had the skills of a great hunter , but he also knew the woods themselves . He was the kind of man that knew when a tree was in need , or knew when the beavers had built a dam that was going to fail . The Skara forest was his , and he belonged to the forest . Sosaria was entirely different back then , and the world was simple . . . and pure . The people worked hard , and they tilled the land and raised crops , or they herded flocks , on the moors . And my mother was no different . She was born to a highland clan , a clan that relied heavily on the herds of sheep that would graze the hillsides near what was then called Unter Brae . When she was young , only 14 or 15 , she was told by her father that they were to attend the Unter Brae Fair . It was the social event of the year , and the one time that the simple folk of Unter Brae would mingle with the town folk of Skara . My mother was thrilled , for it was the first time that she had been allowed to attend the fair . She prepared for it all week , and told all of her friends that she was to attend the Unter Brae Fair . She prepared her dress , which I had for sometime , until events parted me from it . It was a lovely white dress , and she wore a garland of freshly picked highland flowers . I could only imagine how beautiful she looked that day , and later , I would one day hope to wear that same dress on the day of my wedding . . . a day that has yet to come , and I know that most of that was my fault . At the Unter Brae Fair , my mother saw and heard sites that she had only dreamed of . There were minstrels , and exotic foods from as far away as Yew . My mother was so excited , that she could barely remember the real reason that she was there . . . to help her father with the prize livestock they had brought to sell . Soon , they arrived at their stall in the stables , and my grandfather instructed her to bring in the livestock . With them , they had brought 20 head of sheep . . . the finest in the land , and 10 head of goat , and 20 head of cattle . . . all the finest you could ever see ! And if they did not sell these animals , then the winter would be very harsh . She herded the cattle to the back of the stall , and they obeyed . And she herded the goats in next , and they also obeyed , and finally . . . the sheep , and they also obeyed her . My mother was born with an inate sense of animal control , and so was I . He was a young man , only about 16 or 17 , and he was born into the local gentry of Skara Brae . He was confident , yet refined . He strode through the stalls at the fair as if he were the king himself . . . and according to my mother , he should have been . His father was a descendant of some great line that had inherited a large tract of land in Skara Brae . They were more or less aristocrats , in an area that had very few . He and his father had wandered up to the stall my mother was working at , and they were interested in purchasing a couple of ewe . Of course , these were sold immediately , but my mother had caught his eye . She was bashful , and coy . . . but he was so comely , that my mother could not help but fall victim to his charm . And he asked her father if he could escort her to the dance that evening . As the night fell , they would dance , and listen to the minstrels that had come from Yew and Minoc , and even Trinsic . They danced , and they enjoyed the revelry . The music , the food , the cider , and the wine . It was unimaginable for a young highland girl like my mother . She was a striking beauty . . . and I mean she was completely amazing . She had long black hair , down to about the middle of her back , and she had the bluest eyes . . . like the sea in the Tropical Regions . These were traits I would inherit from her . . . but all of that is for later . They were married just outside the town itself , and the flowers were brought from the exoctic areas of the lands , like Jhelom and Magincia . My father 's father spared no expense . There were rare foods , wines , and minstrels . It was a celebration to put the Unter Brae Fair to shame ! Hundreds of the local citizens turned out . And the newly wed couple were in complete bliss . The wedding party would later throw an after wedding bash , as was the custom at the time , that would still be discussed until the Great Renaissance in the lands around Skara . My father was called to Skara Brae . There was evil in the land . Lizard men , Orcs , Trolls , Ettins , and even ancient Dragons were reported to be inhabiting the land . Lord British , the king himself , was present at the meeting . There was much concern . And so Lord British declared martial law throughout the land . He appointed a division of Royal Guards to every town . . . and in the out lying areas , he appointed Wardens . I was about 7 years old , and my father took me into the forest for the first time . We were hunting the Great Harts that roamed the forest . We had to be cautious , because they were prolific , but we could not hunt too many . . . for they were like any other creature . . . if you hunt them too much , they become extinct . I had never been much of an outdoors person , but I was always happy to spend time with my father . As he handed me the bow , I sensed that there was more to this than him wanting me to slay a Hart . He wanted to teach me how to be independant . I loosed an arrow . . . and it hit the Hart in the side . We ran to the body , but found it still living . My father drew his blade , and slit the throat of the Hart . For some reason , I felt badly . . . and my father dragged the carcass back to the cabin , in the snow . . . he said nothing . " One shot , one kill . The arrow is an extension of the hunter , and prey is also an extension . If you do not kill on the first shot , you are likely to be killed yourself . " With that , he kissed my head , and sent me off to clean up for bed . I went out into the woods . There was snow all around , and the night air was a shock to my warm body . I loved the snow . . . and I also loved the forest . I woke up the next morning in my bed with a remarkable headache . My mother was sitting on the side my bed , applying a compress to my wound . She was so upset . At that time in Sosaria , there was only life and death . If you died , you passed into the afterlife . If you were only injured , the healers could help you . As with any skill or power , I suppose it takes time to truly master the art . It had been months since my mother 's announcement , and I could see a difference in my father . He had become more diligent , and often . . . at night , he would tell me that duty was the highest honor . He would tell me about the Virtures . . . and the Three Principles . He would tell me about Lord British . . . and Lord Blackthorn . He would tell me about the things that roamed the forest . . . and the things he was seeing everyday . Methodiya was an older lady . She had lived in that forest since she was a small girl , no bigger than I was . I knocked on her door , and she came out . I was old enough to understand what happened . . . and my heart was shattered . When my father told me , I ran into the forest . Sobbing . I ran . And I ran . And I ran . Until I was stopped . He swung at me , and barely missed with his mace . I screamed for my father . But inside of me , I knew he was too far away to hear me . The Lizard Man let out some kind of hissing sound , and swung again . This time , I was not so lucky . . . he bashed my leg . . . and it was really painful . I screamed again . I just knew my father had come to save me , but I was wrong . It was someone that I would later know well . . . a young woodsman named Robin . He helped me to my father 's cabin . Months passed , and my young sister Abigail was a joy . What a bright child ! She was so cute , and so quick to discover new things ! She was the apple of my father 's eye . . . or at least , that is what I thought at the time . One day , I was out hunting hinds , and I came across a great steed . I had never seen a horse like this , and he was as wild as a great storm . I approached him , and he charged me , knocking me to the ground . . . I knew this horse had to be mine ! This seemed to partly do the trick , and with some reassurance , he allowed me to pet him . From here , a friendship like no other was formed . I named him Rayder . . . and we went to my father 's cabin together . Tidehawke LeFay knew every creature in the forest of Skara . The ones you approached , the ones you left alone , and the ones you killed . This particular steed was one that my father had left alone . . . because he was not tamable . . . yet I , a 12 year old girl had managed to tame him . Everyday , I would ride Rayder into the forest . I was becoming quite the ranger , and quite the archer . My father had , at first , tried to stop me from entering the forest alone , but eventually , he knew that I was not going to listen , and that I was safe there . The forest had become like my home . I would explore , and I would commune with the creatures there . If I came to the home of the beavers , they would not flee . If I came to the great bears , they would allow me to pet their fur . The creatures of Skara forest were my friends , and I was theirs . The game that day was Lord British marries Morgana LeFay . I was Abigail 's idol back then , and she just knew in her heart that some day the king would come and marry me . It was something that I , back then , have to admit . . . fantisized about . The high society of Britain had turned out to pay their respects to someone they didn 't know . They came , dressed in the finest clothes . . . they came , from far off lands . . . like Serpent 's Hold . They consorted with one another . . . and they consoled Lord British . . . and Lord Blackthrone , and the other society types . . . but not one came to me , or to Abi . . . and expressed one shred of grief . Abigail was a child prodigy . And she was taken to study in Britain , under the King 's care . He took her into his castle , and made many appearances with her . The road to Trinsic was a perilous journey back then . I arrived at the bridge , and saw 4 murderers there . . . I did not know their names , and I never would . I paused . . . but then just rode up like I owned the bridge . Here I met a man named Hawthorne . He was complaining about being attacked near the dungeon Deceit . I approached him , and asked him how I could help . He told me that he needed people to ride with him to retrive his lost goods . I thought about it for a moment . I had 4 arrows , and some old hand - me - down armor from my father . . . that barely fit . I asked him if he would wait for me , and he recalled away . He did not seem to be amused , more embarassed . I called to him . . . " What are you doing ? " And then he explained . . . he was stealing items that were locked in the community trunks . I was sort of appalled , and sort of . . . well , attracted . He was a musclebound young man , probaly about 20 years old , and let 's just say . . . the gods had been kind to him . I went out of my room , and I heard a man arguing with the innkeeper . Apparently , someone had stolen something he had in the middle of the night . This man would become one of the greatest friends I have ever known . . . as he stormed off in some sort of hissy - fit . . . I followed him . I was a little taken aback . In fact , I took 3 steps back . He apologized , and his demeanor changed entirely . He asked me my name and I gave it to him . I had been practicing with my sword at the Warriors Guild when a man came in and said that he had seen a miracle ! Someone had died on the road to Britain , and a healer had managed to bring him back to life . This was the very first time I had ever heard of such a thing , and I was skeptical . But it would turn out to be true , and shortly after that , it became a common practice . Mages and healers had learned to revive the dead , as long as they did so quickly , before the spirit passed into the afterlife . I arrived at Lord British 's castle , and rode to the area where he was to speak . I looked around for Abigail , but I could not find her . The King 's guards were everywhere . He came out to the sound of great applause , and there were dignitaries there , that he spoke to as he approached the stage . He ascended the stage , and began to speak . I do not even recall what he was saying because of the chaos that ensued later . . . but I still remember this clearly : This was not a good idea . They had no control over these beasts from the depths of hell , and they went on a rampage , killing everyone in sight . I gave Rayder a kick , and we were off as fast as we could go . . . but a demon pursued us . Rayder was fast , and we made for the Skara forest . The demon was behind us , howling some ancient curse . . . and we entered the forest . Before I knew what was happening , I was knocked from Rayder by a spell , and fell to the ground . The shops in Skara were often filled with craftsmen that would sell their goods to the shopkeepers then . . . and often , if an item was not made as well as the shopkeepers would like , it would be discarded . I saw a young man throw a leather bustier on the ground . . . and I asked him why he did . He told me that the shopkeeper would not purchase it , because they had too many as it were . So I asked him if I could take it . He said he had no use for it , so I picked it up . He looked at me for a moment , and he recongnized me . He had known my father , and he offered to craft me a suit of armor , one that was especially made for me . I had just gotten to the road , and I saw a young man running through the woods on the other side . He was a dark fellow . . . bald , with a muscular build . He had a big grin on his face . . . like he had done something and gotten away with it . I pursued him . I asked him what he was doing . He told me he was just exploring , that he was new in the area . I introduced myself , and he told me his name . He asked me where I was off to , and I told him that I was headed to Trinsic . He said that he had never been to Trinsic , so I invited him to come along . He said that he needed grab some supplies , and that he would meet me there later . In those days , the roads had started to become unsafe , so I would try to stick to the woodland trails . The woods between Skara and Trinsic were often filled with ogres , trolls , and other creatures . . . but they were usually safer than dealing with the robbers and killers that had taken to roaming the roads . I was almost to the gates of Trinsic when I heard a strange sound . I looked behind me , and I saw something frightful . . . a huge spider , as big as a cow ! I gave Rayder a nudge , but he was not so quick moving through the overgrowth . The spider was fast , and it was upon us before I could even pull my bow . I was knocked to the ground , and I felt the fangs as they pierced my shoulder . I don 't remember much else . . . but this would be the first of many times I entered into the ethereal plane that lies between life and true death . This was a frighening experience . I did not know what to do . The world looks very different from the ethereal plane . . . but I could see that Rayder had gotten free of the overgrowth and was running from the spider . I was in a panic . What did I do ? Did I stay here ? I remembered that someone had said that the healers had managed to resurrect someone , but I had no idea how that worked . I saw a man in a robe walking through the forest near the road . As I approached him , he spoke to me using the language of the spirits . . . Spirit Speak . I asked him if he could help me , and he told me to remain calm . . . and he began to cast a spell . It was a spell I would later cast more times than I can count . With a rush of energy , and very bright light , I was back in the land of the living . I felt weak , and I had no idea where my old body was . . . I decided to look around for Rayder . I was walking around calling for him , and then I felt an arrow in my back , and then another . I was back in the ethers . This time , I wasn 't so scared . . . I just found the healer again . Once I was in Trinsic , some skinny woman came up to me . She was just a nasty little thing . Dressed like a harlotte , and looking like was in good need of a bath , she started walking directly beside Rayder and I . She asked me where I was off to . It was a sight I had not seen before . The Royal Guards could teleport , and they carried Halberds . In those days , their orders were to kill first and ask questions later . Many a thief would fall in this same manner . . . and as many times as I saw it happen , sometimes immediately next to me , like this time . . . I never failed to jump . When I arrived , there was a young man there working at the forge . He had crafted several items , some he had in a basket , and others he had in a heep on the floor . I asked him if he was going to sell the items , and he said that he was selling the stuff in the basket , and that if I wanted to buy any of them , that I could have a look . I was approaching the inn , when I heard that sound . . . sort of a whoosh . . . followed by WHAM ! A guard had just killed a thief . I turned the corner , and I saw the body lying there , with a sack full of items . No one was around , so I picked up the sack and hurried to the inn . I gave Rayder to the stable master and went into the inn , where I would use the last of the gold I had to pay for my room . I dragged the sack into the room , and opened it up . There were leather gloves , gorgets , a katana sword , magic reagents , and various other items . I wasn 't sure what to do with it all , so I figured I would take what I needed and sell the rest . I put together a suit of leather armor that was acceptable , and there was still a great deal left . . . so I set out for the provisioner . I reached the provisioner , but I was only able to sell five things . I had a nice little sack of gold , and still had many items . . . so I rode to the bank . In those days , the bank would not store goods for you . The would only accept gold . So I turned my gold over to the banker , and was about to go to the armourer 's shop to see if I could sell anything else . . . I allowed him to take anything he wanted from the bag , and he asked me where I got all that stuff . I told him , that there were people around that would kill , cheat , and steal from him . . . and that I had take these items off of one of those persons . He seemed to think that was the greatest thing ever ! I rarely saw him in those days without a smile on his face . He had a zest for life like no one I had ever met . He was so eager to explore . . . he reminded me of Abigail when she was just learning to walk ! ! It was so cute . . . and also , there was something about that zeal that made want to be involved . I cannot explain it . . . it was like when I was a little girl , fighting imaginary Ice Giants all over again ! ! We set out for Britain . I wanted to see if I could visit with Abigail . As we approached the stone structure near Trinsic , we saw some wandering healers . One of them looked really familiar to me . I told Clean that we should go over there . . . and my suspicions were confimed . It was that naked thief from Trinsic ! Coudrac . In addition to that , he was lockpicking the trunks in the stone structure and stealing the items that the healers would store there . He admitted what he was up to , and took us just a short way north in the woods , where he had made a cache of stolen goods . He had everything . It was like shopkeepers paradise ! As we made our way toward the bridge , I knew what lay ahead . . . so I was ready . Sure enough , the murderers that I had talked my way past were out there , killing . I immediately attacked . . . killing one of them . I thought Clean was going to do the same , but he hesitated . . . and it got him paralyzed . I shot one of the others . . . and the words of my father came back to me in my head " One shot , one kill . If you do not kill on the first shot , you may end up dead yourself " . I looked over , and the other two had killed Clean , so I decided to fall back . We were out in the open here , and I wanted to get some cover for a better shot . Another of them fell . . . and the other one decided to turn tail and run . I don 't like shooting people in the back , but this guy had some of Clean 's stuff . . . and he had pissed me off . So I dropped him as well . About that time , Clean came running up in his death shroud . He was a funny sight with that bald head of his in that robe ! He made everyone chuckle , and , as always , he had that grin on his face . Death or no death , I could tell he was loving every minute ! Coudrac was quite the scoundrel . He was a roguish man , with chiseled good looks . He always had a smug look about him . . . unless he was stealing . Then , he was all business . I would develop a crush on this him , as he was something I was certainly not used to . I had a thing for bad boys I guess . . . and eventually , that very quirk would be my undoing . Hawthorne was the kind of man that considered himself slightly superior to those around him . He wasn 't what I would call arrogant per se , more . . . aloof . Some of the men my father had dealt with often had that same aire about them . Most of them were as useless as a dull war fork when it came to real life . Now , I am not saying that was the case with Hawthorne , but I did feel that he accepted Clean and I out of obligation to Coudrac , rather than out of any real desire to associate himself with us . Silverthorne was a diplomat . He had once served on the Britain Mage Council ( later to be known as the Council of Mages ) . . . and was an advisor to Lord Magnus , and even Lord Blackthorne . Silverthorne would eventually become one of the Blue Servants of the gods . . . and would act as a liason between man and god . He was a kind and gentle man , and wise beyond his years . Eventually , Silverthorne would become a great friend , a mentor , a neighbor , and a guildmate . Being that there were only a handful of us , I thought that the guild would be more of a loose democracy . It wasn 't . Hawthorne made it very clear from day 1 that he was in charge . I didn 't have any problem with that , but I knew that this alliance between Hawthorne and Coudrac would not last long . . . as Coudrac was a man that followed no one . We would often gather in Britain . I knew that Clean hated going to Britain , and I could understand why , but in those days . . . Lord British had gotten his use out of my sister , and the public relations boost he got from posing and making speeches with this poor orphaned prodigy was over . So she was sent to the Music Conservatory to learn music . This was done , of course . . . because she needed to expand her ' cultural refinement ' . Right . This was done because Lord British didn 't want to be bothered with her , and he had some new pet project he was working on . . . something with the Mages . She was becoming an incredible musician . . . and she was starting to grow into a young lady . I remember a day in particular that Coudrac and I had dropped by the Conservatory on the way to Britain Bank to meet the others . Abigail was outside with us , and I noticed . . . she was checking Coudrac out ! She was starting to take an interest in boys . It was so cute ! ! I would check in on her regularly , and made sure that she had everything she needed . This was sort of what I thought we were supposed to be doing . I mean , my father was a Warden . . . and I was raised to believe in the same principles he followed . So as more and more killers and robbers appeared in our lands , I felt it was my duty more and more to be an agent of the King , and to stop them . . . even if I was not commissioned to do so . We never really discussed it . As the Regulators found themselves attacked , and taking vengence for the attacks leveled against us , so we just sort of ended up on " that side " of things by default . That was fine with me . . . because it is what I would have done anyway . Perhaps I should explain a little here . It is not like had some great ' battle senses ' or anything . . . it was just that the bridge between Trinsic and Britain had become a very popular spot for murderers and robbers to lay ambushes for their victims . Another really popular spot was what is known as the Crossroads . . . and I have a story about that spot as well . . . but I will get to that . Sure enough , it was an ambush . . . but we were ready . Clean and I had been studying magic with an elderly lady that lived in Trinsic for a little while now . . . and he had learned the spell of Magic Reflection . In those days , the Magic Reflection spell did exactly what you would think it would do . . . whatever spell was cast on you , reflected back on the caster . The murderers attacked , and as always , their mage threw a paralyze spell on the first person in the walking order . . . Clean . He was paralyzed , leaving us to deal with his mates . Once one was dead , the other made haste , and we killed the murderer that I would later discover to be Dr Deth . . . the murderer that had killed my father . It was Bill Blas . . . the tailor ! Now , Bill was a unique man . He had achieved some fame early in his career because his designs were chosen to be used for the robes of the Mages Council . . . and rumor had it , that even the crest that Lord British wore on his tunic was hand sewn by Blas . I don 't know if there was truth to that . . . it was something Bill would never confirm or deny . He liked to be sort of mysterious . He could come across as being a bit , well , feminine . Like a lot of creative people , he had a certain . . . flair . . . about it him , if you take my meaning . Actually , this may have been why I felt so safe around him . He was older than I was , by a good bit . . . and he was always like that weird uncle that would wear a purple tunic and white sandals to a family function . . . and everyone would gossip about it for months after , but you could not help but love him . Down deep , he was perhaps the kindest man that I have ever known . I think because he was a little different , and because he was a little famous , that he hid that fact . One thing I learned quickly about Blas , was that he was a highly skilled mace fighter . This surprised a lot of people when they first found out . Its not like he was a fencer . . . that would have been expected . No , he was macer , and he had the stregth to shatter a skull with one blow from the war mace he carried . I asked him how he had learned to be such a good mace fighter , and at first he gave me one of those answers that he always gave . . . he told me that he had gotten so good at mace fighting by beating the ladies off of him when he would reveal a new design . But later , he would give me the real reason . . . and that was because he spent a lot of time gathering hides to make leather goods , so he had developed the rudiments doing that . . . and later , he would train with a pit fighter in Jehlom . . . because he wanted to master the skill for protection . Blas was a great friend , and a good teacher . Soon , he had me making basic itmes for him . . . and he paid me well . We would go out , and gather hides , and then he would make armor , thigh boots , leather caps , and such and sold them in the shops in Britain . He even had opened his own small shop just North and West of Britain , and it would remain in business until the Great Renaissance . He crafted armor for Clean and I , and when we would ride through Britain , we would draw some looks . . . for not everyone could afford a full suit of Blas originals . Now days , there is much competition in the land . . . but if you see a Bill Blas original . . . I recommend it ( shameless plug ! I promised I would do it ! ) I was visiting with Silverthorne one day , and he told me that he and his new wife Gwendamere had constructed a house near Trinsic . I had never really thought about buying a house . I generally lived in town . . . at the inn , or on occassion , when money was tight , Abigail would sneak me into the dormatory at the Conservatory . But I started to think this was a good idea . We still found time to do what Clean called " adventure " . . . I swore back then that he was a big kid ! We would visit the dungeons of the land , and the caves , and the wild areas . But nothing we found in any of these places was as deadly and the murderers you would meet on the roads . This went on for several months , and I was growing quite skilled at tailoring . My mother had taught me to sew , but she would have been proud of my work . I even managed to design a few pieces of my own . These are a very rare find if you ever come across one at a vendor shop . . . for it was many , many years ago , and I have since given up tailoring altogether . But for a short time , and I mean a very short time . . . I actually considered becoming a full time seamstress . Our houses were simple . . . just one room affairs , just cottages really . Silverthorne and Gwendamere had build their house slightly to the north , and then later , a second immediately next to it to use for Gwendamere 's Veterinary Hospital . I had a house there , and Clean did as well . . . and so did someone I would meet later that would become a large part of my life . He was a laid back man , with long blonde hair . He was tanned , not as dark as Clean , but tanned . He was slim , but muscular . He did a lot of manual labor . He was a bit of a naturalist . . . like my father , but he seemed to really embrace the lifestyle . He had built his house with his own two hands . He was a skilled carpenter , and he could do things with wood that would astound most people . He was also an excellent lute player . . . and sometimes , at night , he would sit out on his back step , playing his lute . . . and if the surf was calm , I could hear him playing . It was almost as lovely to fall asleep to as the sound of the waves were . The beach there was so different for me . I had grown up in an area where there was much snow and ice . . . and since I had left Skara , I had not seen much of it . I missed it greatly . The snow in Britain was just not the same , as it quickly became dirty , and turned yellow . But when we moved to the beach , I never really missed the snow anymore . It is hard to explain , but for me , that little beach between Britain and Trinsic was like heaven . We spent a lot of time there . And one morning , I had gotten up early to hunt some game . . . and I got a wonderous surprise . Right outside my house , just off my back step . . . were dolphins ! Two of them ! I had never seen a dolphin before . . . and I was elated ! As I mentioned before , I have always been really good with animals . . . but I had never attempted to tame a creature of the sea . Well , I could not tame them . . . but they would come to me when I approached , and they would let me pet them , and I would feed them the fish we would catch in the surf . The moons Felucca and Trammel would shine brightly on that beach when they were in the sky at the same time . . . and neither was new . And on those nights , I would stay out all night . . . just listening to the waves , and enjoying wines or ales with Clean , and Evets , and Silverthorne , and Gwendamere . Occassionally , Bill would come around with something he had bought in the far away parts of the land . I was standing out on my back step when I heard Clean slam his door next door . I went over to see what the matter was , and he was in a death shroud . I knew that he had been slain , and I knew he would be angry . He told me that he had encountered a new murderer in the area around the point . I could not explain it at the time , but that did not sit well with me . He was practically gushing . He said that she was with Vader and his gang . And he went back to the part about her being so beautiful . Well , I don 't know why , but I just stormed off and went home . That really was the first time that I knew that there was something more between Clean and I beyond friendship . I wish I had figured everything out back then , before I made a complete mess of everything and ruined so many lifes . We had arrived in Minoc , and Clean and Evets were helping Blas unload the armor . I had only been to Minoc a few times at that point , and I decided to have a look around . Back then , the town officials in most of the towns would post a bulletin board by the bank that listed the names of those that were wanted for crimes . The usual names were on the boards in most of the towns . . . but Minoc was sort of slow to keep things up to date . Minoc was a mining town , and besides ore thieves , there wasn 't that much crime . . . not like in some of the other towns . Her name was MoonlightMyst . And she would betray me in a way that no other ever had . . . not even Dr Deth , for he had no idea what he was doing . He was just a thug . She was much worse . . . A group of murderers had taken to killing adventurers and travellers to the south of Trinsic , and the surrounding areas . They were led by a powerful mage called Vader . He was a dark , and evil man . . . and I have theories as to why he was such , but I have no proof of what I suspect , so I will keep it to myself . She was good . . . very skilled in the art of combat . As I loosed my first arrow at her lovely head , she teleported behind me . . . and hit me with a fireball . It almost knocked me off of Rayder . I turned to face her , and she flashed me a very disturbing smile . And from behind me , I heard the words Kal Vas Flam , and I was engulfed in magical fire . This nearly killed me . . . and it would have , if Evets had not healed me at the last second . He returned Vader 's flamestrike . . . and I fired my bow into his heart . . . and he fell . Clean had dispatched Burr , and was coming around to attack Moon . She simply made herself invisible , and then teleported behind him . She was an elusive target . Evets had an idea . . . and this would later become a common tactic we used . He put up a paralyze field on one side of her , and I put one up on the other , creating a corridor of sorts , with us on one end , Clean on the other , and her right in the middle . She had no where to go . And just before I loosed the arrow to put her down . . . she spoke " Go ahead beautiful . . . if you think you have what it takes . " I let go of the arrow , and with that , she was gone . Recalled . . . the only thing that remained was her laughter . I stood there for a moment , and realized . . . she really made us look bad . We needed to improve our tactics . . . if we were to face foes like this . We gathered up the belongings of Burr and Vader . . . and we rode back to Trinsic . A few days later , I would run into her in Trinsic . It shocked me that she just walked up , like nothing had happened , and said " Hiya doll . That was some fight you put up the other day . You ever consider what someone like you and someone like I could do together ? " I could have just walked away , I should have just walked away . . . so much would have been different , but it was the same thing that initially drawn me to Coudrac . And just said " I imagine we could do all kinds of things together . . . and some of them might be very , very , interesting " . I was actually flirting with her . This killer . This evil witch . . . but I have to admit , Clean was right . She was the kind of beautiful that you cannot help but stare at . I have been told that I am as beautiful as she was , but if I looked into a mirror , I never saw it . I think it was those eyes . . . those deep brown eyes . . . you could lose yourself in them . . . and that is eventually exactly what I did . We would meet , in secret . Just she and I . We would talk for hours . She was an amazing woman . And she had endured so much in her life , that I felt sorry for her . Maybe that was part of the reason that I felt so strongly for her . . . I don 't know . When she was 13 , she slit his throat in his sleep , and she fled home . . . and became a street person . She eventually wound up in Buc 's Den . . . where she would pick pocket , and even provide favors to the sailors there for gold . She had met Vader , and he had promised her a better way of life . . . but she knew that he wanted more from her than he let on . We had to keep our special friendship a secret . Vader would not stand for her associating with someone like me , and I wasn 't sure how the newly formed Protectors of Virtue would feel about me associating with someone like her . . . so in front of the guild , or her group . . . we were mortal enemies . But in private , we had begun to fall deeply in love with one another . I would make excuses for reasons to go off alone , and we would meet up . . . and steal away to an out of the way inn , or just ride our horses and talk . I wanted so much for her to become a part of the PoV . . . to see the dolphins , to know the friendships I had in Evets , and Clean . . . and Blas and Abi . But this would not be possible . . . and I am not sure she would have even appreciated any of it , although . . . I think she would have under other circumstances . Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet . Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years . We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players . |
Take my button , and let me know you did ! Please make sure your buttons are no more than 150 px wide , and I will post them here . Copy this code to your website or blog : These are fandoms I am a part of . The images have been found on Facebook or were sent to me by a friend , so I don 't know the owners of the images . If you see yours here and would like it removed , just drop me a comment and I 'll remove it immediately . Or if it 's yours , but you want it linked to you , I can do that as well : ) AAWC # 8 ~ Torturous Days Published May 27 , 2016 THIS IS THE LAST CHALLENGE OF AAWC ! ! * cries * I 'm really sad . It 's been so much fun , but I 'm sure that Misty will be quite relieved once it 's over , so I 'll be happy for you , Misty ! ; D Always alone . Never safe . That 's been my life for as long as I could remember . Unfortunately , that 's just the way it is for outlaws . Really , though , I think outcast suits me better . My people voted me out of the throne in my kingdom , and since then , I 've been on my own . They couldn 't accept me for who I was . I raised my head in annoyance at the sound of Edmund 's voice . Okay , so I wasn 't alone , alone . At least not with him around . We always ran into each other on the streets , since we were both outlaws and pretty much homeless . " Oh , my apologies , your outlaw - ness . It seems I 've offended you . " Edmund bowed dramatically before me , but I just glared at him . " Leave me alone , Ed . " I demanded , returning my eyes to my worn out leather journal . Sometimes I wished I was invisible so he wouldn 't know where I was . Then I could escape him . " What 's wrong , Glooooooria ? " He teased , singing my name like that part in the song , " Angels We Have Heard On High . " He knew I hated it when he did that . " I might , if you don 't go right now ! " I warned , but he didn 't move a muscle . I pursed my lips together and rose to my feet , raising my fist back and sending it flying into his stomach . He didn 't even flinch . " Wow . That was better than I expected it to be . I expected to feel nothing , like a little tickle , but I actually felt a teeny , tiny bit of something . You 're not as weak as you look , Your Highness . " He mocked . Edmund never did believe that I was royalty and he gladly used it to make fun of me . The process was over in 2 minutes . He didn 't stop screaming for another 5 . Either he was a big baby , or that machine was more painful than I thought . " It 's payback for everything you 've done to me in all the years I 've known you ! All the torture you put me through ! " I shouted back . " No ? You tortured me every day with your teasing , your mockery , the public humiliation ! So I spent the last two years creating this machine to get even with you ! " Everything fell silent . My heart froze and I couldn 't find a word to say . All those long years he was teasing me , mocking me , because he loved me ? I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes welling up with tears . I wasn 't sure how to respond to this . Here was a man sitting before me that I hated my entire life , professing his love for me . It touched me in a way I had never experienced before in my life . I felt my heart softening toward him . Maybe it was possible …… . . No . I shook away every positive feeling I had for him and replaced it with my anger and vengeance . I scowled at him and said , " It 's too bad nobody loves you . " 10 Comments CWWC # 5 & AAWC # 7 ~ The World 's Hero Published May 16 , 2016 Why , heeeelllooooo ! Today I present to you - The World 's Hero ! Honestly , a tear trickled down my cheek and I got teary like twice as I read and wrote this . I hope you enjoy ! 😀 " What do you suppose they 're talking about ? " Britta inquired , her voice barely audible . I knew she was scared , I could see it in her big eyes . I looked at her with sympathy and said , " I don 't know . But I 'm sure everything will be fine . " I assured her , though I wasn 't sure if that was true . I was almost as scared as she was . Two months ago , things began to change . Paul , my older brother who was eighteen years old , had been leaving early each morning with a weapon and returning late each night . Myra , our older sister who was sixteen years of age , started to say in her prayers , " Girls , we need to tell you something . " Papa said gravely and Britta , who was always emotional , instantly began to cry . Mama placed her hand on Britta 's knee and shushed her , though Mama 's eyes were full of tears as well . " No , my darling . No one ever comes back if they cross over the border , what lies beyond is unknown . We have to say goodbye now . " Mama choked . " We have no choice , sweetheart . We have no choice . " Papa stated , as tears trickled down his cheeks . Mama and Papa wrapped their arms around the three of us as we all sobbed . When I looked up , I saw that even Paul and Myra were crying . I knew then that they truly did love us little ones , no matter how mean or bossy they acted . And I would miss them desperately . " Keep going , Britta ! Alisha , keep up ! " I shouted as my sisters and I dashed through the village , trying to escape the monsters that were chasing us . " You have to come quickly . They 're holding a meeting at the swan 's lake . " Erica explained . My heart skipped a beat . That was never a good thing . " We must find a way to stop them before they destroy all of us and the world , too ! " Our leader , Mr . Perkins declared . His eyes lit up as he saw me arrive and he motioned for me to join him . " I 'm sure most of you know Julie already . She 's an excellent survivor and I wanted her to be with us during this meeting so I could ask her a very important question . " Mr Perkins explained , then turned to me and asked , " What do you know about these monsters ? " " Um … Well , they 're cunning , they 're brave , and brutal . They 're relentless and … . They 're hunting us . " I declared and the crowd went silent , as though they were waiting for me to say more , so I went on , " I don 't know why they 're hunting us , or even where they came from . What I do know , is that if we don 't find a safer place to live , the human race will be wiped out and all that will remain is a broken world . " " What about all the children ? We have to find a way to save them at least ! We have to give them their best chance ! " A tall , redheaded woman stated . My heart leaped in my chest and my mind traveled back in time … . " No , my darling . No one ever comes back if they cross over the border , what lies beyond is unknown . We have to say goodbye now . " Mama choked . " The mirrors . The Legend , what if it 's true ? What if there are Ferrymen that guard mirrors ? And what if those mirrors do lead to different worlds ? " I suggested and I could tell that Mr . Perkins was in deep thought . " My mama once said to my sisters and I , No one ever comes back if they cross over the border , what lies beyond is unknown . What if the worlds where the mirrors lead are what 's beyond ? " I exclaimed , my head spinning with thoughts and excitement . " Very well . Get together a scouting party and go hunting for one of those mirrors . I leave this in your capable hands . " Mr . Perkins agreed and I wrapped my arms around him in a grateful hug . Now all I could do was hope that we could find a mirror . I ducked underneath a low hanging branch and meandered through the forest . I caught sight of the sign my sisters and I had placed on an old oak tree several years ago . It said ; Here be faeries . Oh , how we loved to believe faeries were real ! If only they really were … " Down here ! " The voice called out . I looked down at the mossy ground and saw a tiny girl with blonde hair and glowing blue eyes staring up at me . " I 'm a faerie , you should know ! But I 'm sure you didn 't know that this forest truly is where faeries live . " The little faerie explained . " Oh , yes ! But enough of this , I 'm here to help you find what you 're looking for . " The faerie said , quickly changing the subject . " I 'm small and quick as a firefly , I can sneak around and pick up on things . What you seek is real , Julie . I 'll take you to it . Follow me ! " She commanded and flew off , but I ran after her , trying to keep up . She was definitely fast ! She lead me to a deep , dark part of the forest , but I could see myself running forward . This doesn 't make any sense … Wait … . It 's my reflection ! " Here we are ! This is the Grand Mirror - the biggest mirror in the entire world ! It circles the entire forest . All you have to do is walk through , and it will take you somewhere safe . " The Faerie explained . " They are , but I 've already spoken with them . After much deliberation , they 've finally agreed to let you all through ! " She exclaimed and I nearly screamed for joy . " You don 't have to repay me . Just get everyone here so you can go through and be safe . " She instructed and flew away before I could say another word . " Mr . Perkins ! Mr . Perkins ! Mr . Perkins ! " I shouted over and over until I spotted him sitting on a log bench , reading a book . " No , no , Mr . Perkins ! I found it ! I found a mirror and the Ferrymen agreed to let us all through ! " I explained and stopped to catch my breath . Mr . Perkins looked into my eyes and I saw the tears entering his . " My dear , girl . You 've done it . The world needed a hero , and that 's exactly what you became . I 'm so proud of you . And I know that , if they were here , your parents would be , too . " Mr . Perkins affirmed . A smile spread across my face and tears trickled down my cheeks . Word had reached my ears several years ago that my parents had passed , but even though I didn 't have them with me , I could feel them smiling down at me . Mr . Perkins was right , they were proud of me . And knowing that made my heart soar . I stood on a dirt pathway that twisted and turned a corner , leading deeper into the forest I found myself in . Trees stood all around me and the green was unlike any green I had seen on trees before . It seemed so - magical . I looked to my right and noticed a wooden board attached to a tree . In bold , white letters it read : " I don 't know ! I don 't even know where I am or how I got here ! " I shouted , feeling exasperated . Saying that made me realize that this was real . I was somewhere I 'd never been before and I didn 't even know how I got here . " Look , I don 't know where I am . Could you please come out and answer some of my questions ? " I politely requested . Suddenly I saw a floating blue light coming down from the tree tops . It grew larger as it approached me and I admit , I was slightly afraid . Before I knew it , a girl with luminous blue eyes was standing before me , her smile sweet and gentle . Several glowing blue butterflies fluttered by her - one she held tenderly in the palm of her hand . " You came here through your dream . " The girl stated and then went on to introduce herself , " Oh , I 'm Carnation , by the way . " " I 'm Peter . Wait , so , I 'm dreaming ? Or is this real ? " I inquired in wonderment . " This is quite real , Peter . Weren 't you dreaming about flying ? " She questioned . " Sure ! I 've had dreams of flying lots of times , but this is the first time I 've woken up away from home . It 's pretty amazing ! " I exclaimed , taking in my surroundings . " And haven 't you always wished to never grow up ? To not have any rules to follow ? And to be able to fly ? " Carnation inquired , counting on her fingers as she listed each thing . " I 'm a fairy . I 've been to the Mainland before , where you 're from . I just know these things . And I 'm here to tell you , Peter , that now all your dreams can come true ! " She explained . " I mean , you are free to stay here now ! In Neverland , there are no rules and nobody ever grows up . Do you believe you can fly ? " She inquired , a playful grin on her face . " You 're doing great ! " Carnation applauded as she watched me soaring through the night sky . It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before . The wind in my hair , the sense of freedom , how light and carefree I felt . The sight below me was astonishing - Neverland was wonderful . I saw a mermaid lagoon , a cavern that looked like a skull , Indian territory , open sea and pirate ships . What more could a boy ask for ? This place was my new home , I knew that much . Jingle , jingle ! It sounded like bells … I took off toward the direction of the sound until I came to the shore . I spotted a small fairy with blonde hair tied up in a bun and clothed in a green dress with her foot caught under a large rock . " Yeah , you know , the stuff that washes up from the mainland . " She answered , as though it were obvious . I searched around and saw many random items . I found silverware , springs , a portrait of a swan , a hairbrush , but the one thing I thought could help me most was a bronze pan . I walked back over to the fairy and slid the handle of the pan underneath the rock and pressed down with all my might . The rock lifted just enough for the fairy to fly free . " Wow , thanks ! You should be a tinker ! " The fairy said gratefully . " What 's your name ? " I asked her . " Peter , huh ? Well , as my rescuer , I hereby dub you … Peter Pan ! In honor of the pan you used to free me ! " Tinkerbell issued , proud of her name idea . " Great ! Hey ! Why don 't I give you a tour of Neverland ? I could show you Mermaid Lagoon , Skull Rock , introduce you to Tiger Lily , you 'd LOVE her , and - oh ! We 'll have to be careful of Captain Hook and his scurvy crew . He doesn 't like any of us . " Tinkerbell suggested and I gladly took her up on her offer . I liked Tinkerbell and it was no surprise to me that we became best friends . " Peter ! " I called out his name in the silence , like he would actually hear , like he would actually care . I was his friend first . I told him everything . I taught him how to fly . I thought we would be great friends . Then he had to go and meet Tinkerbell . The two of them had become best friends and partners - they were completely inseparable . You hardly heard one name without the other , since they were the heroes now . Always fighting off Captain Hook and his crew . Eventually , everyone in Pixie Hollow turned against me , because they always said I was jealous of Tink . So , I left Pixie Hollow for good and I shoved all those bad memories with Pan , as he was mostly now called , into a box , deep down inside myself that I would never open up again . " Goodbye , Peter Pan . Goodbye , Pixie Hollow . " 10 Comments CWWC & AAWC ~ Memories , Memories Published May 6 , 2016 Hi everyone ! I 'm here again with my second story for CWWC and my fifth for AAWC ! I had fun with this one 😀 For as long as I could remember , I had always felt like something in my life was missing . Granted , I had a wonderful , loving family , tons of friends , and pure joy followed me just about everywhere I went . Everywhere , but my classroom . Each time I stepped in the room all my joy faded away from me and I felt - empty . " I need a hero . " I whispered to myself . I was so desperate to be rescued from this emptiness that I actually said I wanted a hero . That 's stupid . I 'm 16 , I know that heroes aren 't real . " I - I don 't know . I 'm fine , though . " I assured her with a smile . Mom glanced at Dad who was standing close behind her , his arms crossed tightly across his chest . " Did you have a good day at school , Swan ? " He inquired with an inquisitive brow . Swan was my nickname he gave me when I was little because I was always dancing around the house , flowing and gliding gracefully like a swan . Plus I had an obsession with Swan Lake , so it seemed to fit . My mind drew a blank . I couldn 't remember anything about school . " I don 't know . I can 't remember … " I said slowly , trying my hardest to remember what I did that day . Dad muttered something to mom , trying to hide it from me . This wasn 't like my parents . They seemed so disturbed , this hardly ever happened . Everything was only ever perfect . I woke up in the middle of the night . It was very quiet and I knew it must have been very late . I felt an urge , almost a calling , to go downstairs . I jumped out of my bed and tiptoed down the creaking staircase . I noticed that the storage door under the staircase was open , so I went to close it . But just as I was about to , I saw a large white box on the floor that said ; " BAD MEMORIES . DO NOT OPEN . " Suddenly I felt that emptiness again . That terrible , lonely , heartache . I knelt down and placed my hands on the box before me . Something inside told me that this is what I needed to rid me of this emptiness . " Please , you have to let me see them ! They 're my parents ! " I cried . One of the officers knelt down and placed his strong hands on my shoulders . " Iris , I 'm sorry , but there 's nothing we can do . Your parents died . Seeing them would only make it harder for you . " He explained and gave me a comforting hug . My heart broke and my throat ached from crying . " Those are for me . It 's my birthday today . " I sobbed . The officer handed me the doll and I held her close to my chest , letting tears pour onto her silky hair . I paused again to check the date on the paper . " March 30th , 2008 . My 8th birthday … " I said with a shaky breath . This couldn 't be possible , but I believed this girl was me . The facts were accurate . But everything happening … . That never happened … " Mom , Dad , what is this ? This girl , her name is Iris and she has the same birthday as me . But here it says that her parents died … . I don 't understand … " I trailed off , hoping they would explain . Mom and Dad looked at each other sadly and sighed as they sat on the floor beside me . " Yes . I 'm the officer on the page who spoke with you and hugged you . I felt an attachment to you and your mother and I adopted you . Months passed on and you never smiled . You never spoke . You would stay alone in your room most of the day and sometimes we would hear you crying at night . " Dad began , and Mom continued , " So we went to see some scientists and they created a machine that could take away all of your bad memories so you could be happy . We used it on you then and we 've been using it on you ever since because we 've been too afraid of you returning to how you were . We only ever wanted you to be happy . " I let tears stream down my cheeks as I said , " You may have taken away the memories , but the feeling was still always there . That painful emptiness that haunted me for years . If you want me to be truly happy and if you really want to be my heroes , please return my memories . Return them so I can feel whole again . " " Of course . If that 's what you truly want . " Mom agreed and pulled me into a warm , loving hug , Dad wrapping his arms over us . At last , I could finally feel complete . I knew then that heroes are real . And I had two of them in my life who I was proud to call ; Mom and Dad . I sat on the ground and let out a hiss as I took my hands off of the broomstick . Slowly , I turned them over and grimaced as I saw them . They were raw and bloody . I swept the back of my hand across my forehead , wiping away the sweat and then looked up at the sun . I had been sweeping for three hours . It was completely unbelievable how dirty the orphanage got in such a short time . I had just swept a few days ago and now here I was at it again . Hesitantly , I picked up the broom and went to put it away so I could wash up . As I dipped my hands into the basin , I winced at the sting . I bit my lip , trying not to cry . It wasn 't just the pain of my hands that hurt , but everything inside me . Every day for my entire life , I had been doing chores here from sunup to sundown . Nobody here liked me , but worse , nobody loved me . I was like the black sheep of the flock , different from everybody else . I was picked on , teased , and bullied every single day . I don 't know how I got on , but somehow I managed to get through the long , hard days . After I had eaten my bowl of beans , I trudged up the stairs until I reached the third floor . I creaked the door open , slipped off my shoes , and wandered over to the window . This was my quiet , peaceful time . Away from chores , away from people , away from troubles . I gazed up into the night sky , the stars twinkling at me . Then I saw my wishing star . I grinned and folded my hands as I stared at it and whispered : " Star light , star bright , first star I see tonight . I wish I may , I wish I might , have the wish , I wish tonight . I wish for a new , happy life , surrounded by people who love me . " I closed my eyes and let a few tears trickle down my cheeks . Why had I been given this life ? Why was I treated so poorly ? Why were my parents taken away from me ? Thoughts like those floated through my mind and I cried for a long while . I wiped my tears away and looked back at the stars , searching for new constellations . There was the Big Dipper , Ursa Minor , and then I saw one that looked a bit like a swan , soaring through the night sky . I wish I could fly away from here . After a while , my sleepiness caught up with me and I sauntered over to my make - shift bed on the floor . Letting out a large yawn , I closed my eyes and fell asleep . In my dreams I flew away and went on a grand adventure , making friends and finding a loving family on the way . It was the best dream I ever had , because it all felt so real . 5 Comments Separated ~ AAWC # 3 Published April 21 , 2016 Whew ! This post is late ! I 've been so busy and suddenly it was Thursday and I 'm like - okay , I need to write my AAWC story ! 😛 Have you ever wondered what causes fissures , cracks in the pavement , or even how The Grand Canyon was made ? Well , let me tell you , it 's not at all what you think . I 'm here to tell you the story of how The Grand Canyon was made - the story of how a broken heart could cause so much damage to the world , and yet turn out to be so remarkable hundreds of years later … . Judy and Nigel ambled arm in arm through the woods together , laughing and chatting along . Neither of them ever grew tired of each other 's company . They were a perfect pair and practically inseparable . As they were strolling past the lake where the swans glided gracefully on the water , they noticed a young woman sobbing by an oak tree . They both knew the look on her face , they 'd seen it several times before . It was the look of a broken heart . Judy and Nigel glanced at each other with pity and walked along , not wishing to disturb the poor girl . " We 're so lucky to have each other . And I know we always will . " Judy said with a smile . Nigel smiled forcefully at her , trying to hide his sadness and uncertainty . He felt in his heart that something was going to come between them and that somehow , they never would see one another again . " Oh , we 'd better invite my Aunt and Uncle Phillips and of course , Louisa and George must come , as well . Do you think I 've forgotten anyone ? " Judy asked her husband to be . Nigel looked up from his paper and smiled . " No , I don 't think you have . " He confirmed . Suddenly the fear entered into him again . The same feeling he had all those months ago . His eyes saddened and his heartbeat quickened . He wasn 't sure what was happening . Judy noticed the look in his eye as he stared at her . She raised her eyebrow and inquired , " Nigel , what 's wrong ? " " I don 't know exactly . " He replied , his face expressing sheer terror . Judy walked around the table and sat beside him , laying her hand on his shoulder . Suddenly a horn bellowed so loud it made the two of them jump and Judy shrieked . Without saying a word , they both flew downstairs and out onto Main Street where they saw strong , threatening men driving dozens of prison wagons into town , whipping their horses along . " It 's orders , Missy ! All men from every town are called to serve in the war and if they refuse , they be hung ! " The man barked back . Judy gasped and as the man started pulling Nigel away , she grabbed hold of his other arm , trying to keep him with her . " Nigel ! Don 't go ! Please ! Stay with me ! " She cried . Nigel looked at his bride - to - be with tears in his eyes . He shut them tight , remembering and treasuring each wonderful moment they had spent together . Then he opened them and said , more sincerely and lovingly than he ever had before , 25 Comments A Treasured Photograph ~ AAWC # 2 Published April 12 , 2016 Hey ho ! ( I almost started singing one of Merry and Pippin 's very entertaining songs ) Today I bring to you my second story for AAWC ! And I included a swan , once again , Misty Before we go on , let me just say - GO TEAM SWAN ! ! ! I BELIEVE IN US ! ! ! ! XD I sat at the edge of the lake , letting my feet soak in the water . Gazing at the glistening lake , I let a tear trickle down my cheek . Gone . They 're all gone . A sob escaped my lips and I had no control over the tears . The ache was so strong that I hugged myself and bent over , allowing the overflowing tears to fall into the lake , creating ripples on the water . " They were wonderful , weren 't they ? " A voice came from behind me and I forced myself to look back and see who it was . A young boy around my age stood there , his eyes red and puffy , as though he had been crying , too . I closed my eyes and nodded my head , unable to speak a word . " I came here every day to visit with the swans . They brought hope and joy to the whole valley . And they were always there to help us and save us from the beasts . I can 't believe someone came and - " The boy paused , not even able to say those two horrible words himself . I sniffed and wiped away some tears as I lifted my head up . " He was my favorite , too . " I informed and the tears poured out again . The boy reached into his pocket and tapped my arm . I looked at him , wondering what he wanted . " This is for you . " He offered and I took the photograph from him and smiled as tears streamed down my cheeks . It was a photograph of Blue , as I had dubbed him , splashing around in the water . I smiled gratefully at him and whispered , " Thank you . " He smiled back at me and went on his way . I wish I could have told him how much it meant to me , but I think he knew already . I would always treasure that photograph , and I 'd always remember that kind boy . I used a writing prompt that said to write the saddest scene you can think of between a boy and a girl , except this is the first time they ever met . I had tried this prompt once before and it didn 't turn out the way I 'd hoped . I feel much more pleased with this one Have a great day ! 6 Comments The Silver Swan Published April 3 , 2016 HIIII ! I 'm SO excited because AAWC HAS BEGUN ! ! ! YAY ! ! ! You 'll be seeing a lot of stories this month ; D James plopped on the velvet sofa and huffed . The entire kingdom had their mind on the war between man and beast . James , however , had his mind on an entirely different matter . " Is there something you need to tell me , James ? " He inquired . Being James ' best friend , he felt he was entitled to know absolutely everything that was going on in his life and - usually - James was happy to share . " Last week I saw a beautiful young maiden in the forest . Her dark hair blew in front of her face and she stared at me with her sad eyes . I was going to speak to her when suddenly a giant winged creature swooped down from above and carried her off into the sunset . Ever since then I haven 't been able to stop thinking about her . I believe she may be in trouble . " James explained , his eyes full of worry . Malcolm grinned and said , " James , I know exactly who it is you saw . " " No one knows . You can try asking her yourself . She lives in the Holland Tower in the back of the forest . " Said Malcolm . James immediately rose from his seat and headed out the door . He didn 't want to waste a single moment . If she was in trouble , he was going to save her . Riding through the forest on his mighty steed , James practically flew to the Holland Tower . As he approached it , he noticed how solemn it looked . So old , so dark . Something wasn 't right there . Swiftly he dismounted his horse and ran to the tower . He looked around , but no door was in sight . He would have to climb . He pushed back his crimson cape and grasped the creases between the bricks , hoisting himself upward . Quickly he climbed , for fear that he would be too late to save The Silver Swan . " I have come to find out who you are . And to determine that you are safe . " James replied . They looked into one another 's eyes for a few silent moments . The young maiden was so touched by this man 's concern that it made her heart soar in a way she hadn 't felt in a long time . At length she said , " I wish , if it pleases you , to know more about you . Why do you live in a tower with no doors ? Why do you hide away in the rear of the forest ? And why do you go to the lake every day ? " James asked respectfully . Arella lifted her head and dropped it again as she let out a soft sigh . She stepped into the light and James noticed for the first time that she had long silver wings - like that of a swan 's - only much bigger . He remained silent , however and waited for her to speak . She wandered to the window and gazed out - her eyes mournful . " Many years ago , a castle stood strong right over there . " Arella began , pointing her finger to a demolished part of land , " A wonderful king and queen lived there and ruled their kingdom with kindness and generosity . Until one day , the queen gave birth to a baby girl . They loved her and they cherished her , but as their daughter grew older , she became different . She wasn 't like the other young boys and girls in the land , and the king and queen grew fearful . They became so preoccupied with protecting their name , their status , that they sided with the people , who also were fearful of the princess , and they did something they would later come to regret . " She paused , her eyes looking down at the window 's ledge . " What did they do ? " James urged . Without looking up she said , " They banished her . " Arella turned away and continued , " The princess always remembered this . She became depressed and insecure about herself , so she stayed in hiding , keeping away from anyone and everyone . Until she heard about the attack on the kingdom . She rushed back home , but by then it was too late . Everything was gone . Her parents , the kingdom , everything but this tower was destroyed . She forgave her parents for their wrongdoings and she settled down in the tower , to keep them close to her heart . " Arella finished , now standing in front of the mirror . James shook his head in disappointment and walked over to her . " Arella , I am deeply sorry for all you have been through . " He said sincerely . Arella looked at him with tears in her eyes . She took a deep breath in and said , " And to answer your other question ; I go to the lake every day to look at my reflection . To remind myself that not only am I human , but a swan . I belong there as well , in the forest and the sparkling waters . That 's where I feel free and beautiful . And when I return here , I look into the mirror . Where I see the human who could have been a princess , kind and generous just as her parents once were . But alas , I remain here , to avoid being seen by anyone so that they won 't ever fear me . " " I can 't understand how anyone could fear you . Arella , you are beautiful - inside and out . Whoever can 't see that is clearly out of their mind . You 're a special young girl and you were made different for a purpose . That I truly believe . " James inspirited her . For the first time in years , a genuine smile spread across Arella 's face . Her one dream had come true at last - to be loved and happy again . Post was not sent - check your email addresses ! Email check failed , please try again Sorry , your blog cannot share posts by email . % d bloggers like this : |
Today is my one month anniversary . One month ago today , I received the official diagnosis that I have breast cancer . To commemorate , I have gone back and read all my blog post from the day I went " public " with the news . After reading the post , I can 't help but think to myself " One month , is that all ? " Some of the words I wrote seem to have been written not just months ago but maybe even years ago . So much has changed in the past thirty days . I wonder how distant those words will seem in one year ? It 's strange , some of the changes that I have been through are normal already . And some of the changes I am still trying to get used to . Some changes will change themselves before I have a chance to get used to them . And I have lots more changes to come . Other than change always being a constant in our lives , one thing will never change . God is good . God is in control . Always . I am so thankful for all He has blessed me with . He has provided me with the right people to help me and travel with me on this journey . In the past month I have learned many things but the one I am reminded of daily is that cancer is hard . But with God guiding me on this journey . . . I took Mattie to breakfast then dropped her off at school . From there , I went to my house ! ! It was the first time I spent more than 30 minutes by myself there in the weeks since my surgery . It was nice just to relax and catch up on my soaps ! LOL Like I need a soap opera in my life ! For lunch , it was our monthly Ladies Lunch with a bunch of women that used to work at WTU together . It was very nice . I had not been able to attend since late last year and I really enjoyed getting to see everyone . From there I went back home and watched some more soaps . It 's hard to catch up after three weeks ! ! Late this afternoon I picked Mattie up at karate and we came out to Mom 's where Mom and Mattie cooked supper . Mattie loves to help cook . After supper , Mom and Mattie watered all the outside plants then we took a short walk . It was then time for Mattie to get her shower and in the bed . We called Grumpy then read our book . She didn 't go to sleep during the book tonight , so we just lay there and she kept patting my shoulder while I rubbed her cheek . Why can 't they just stay little longer ? I think I have kept you up to date on any news with the cancer . I have my first appointment with the oncologist Tuesday . I am so ready . I have had some new " sensations " around the surgery site . Around eleven this morning , I started having the feeling of being shocked . The first time I felt it , I actually thought I had busted a stitch . But there are no stitches on the outside to see . You know how it feels when you turn on a light and get a shock , or when the kids drag their feet on the carpet and then touch each other ? That is how this feels . And it is in the same spot on both sides . Mom and I think it is the nerves getting the feeling back after the surgery . It doesn 't really hurt , it is mostly annoying . If it continues tomorrow , I will be calling the doctor to see if this is normal . Again , it is not painful , just annoying . But this too is just one of those things that I know will pass and reminds me that . . . I wish she didn 't have to ever grow up . But I know she does or we would have a problem ! So I will enjoy her as she is as long as I can . Mom and I just spent the day together doing things that had to be done and we had lunch together at China Star . Yum ! It was so good . I now have an appointment with the oncologist ! ! ! They had told me it could be up to six weeks before they would see me , so when they called and told me next Tuesday , Sept 4 , I was pretty ecstatic ! So a bit more waiting but not the wait I was thinking it would be ! ! ! ! I just continue to be reminded . . . I knew I would be ! It was just one of those changes I had to make it through . And thanks to technology and my sweet daughter , I have first day of school pictures , and I had them probably before the morning announcements were over ! ( Hopefully I will be able to get them downloaded soon ! ) I got the tubes out ! ! ! YAY ! ! Doing a happy dance but no one is here to film me ! ! ! But trust me , I 'm doing it ! It was not the most pleasant experience I have ever had , nor was it the worst ! I 'm just glad Frank was there to hold my hand to get me through it ! ! Always an exciting day in our home . But this year is a bit different I 'm not there . When Katie was little , I always took the first day of school off or at least made arrangements to go in late so I could make her whatever she wanted for breakfast , take pictures of her getting ready , all dressed and on the way , and pictures of her arriving at school and getting to her class . Mattie started pre - k two years ago and so the tradition continued . But I 'm not there this morning . Frank and Katie are getting her ready , and they promised to take plenty of pictures for Lolo . Mattie promised to smile for those pictures . I won 't even get to pick her up from school today . My doctor 's appointment is at 3 : 00 today and that is exactly when she gets out . She will be fine . It 's just me . I have had enough change for a while and I have never liked it when I miss milestones . But things will keep changing until I know my body is completely rid of this beast and reconstruction is complete . I will make it through . I am ready for my doctor 's appointment this afternoon . I am hoping the tubes come out ! I have had enough of them . Late yesterday , I showered on my own , but with Frank within arms reach . He is leaving town after my appointment and he wanted to make sure I could do it by myself before he left . I think I proved I would be OK . Mom and Katie will be here too and I won 't do anything I 'm not supposed to without one of them nearby . Whatever happens today , Mattie going to school without me and my doctor 's appointment . I know that it is His plan . It always is . I shouldn 't question it . I have so much to be thankful for . I will continue to pray , because whatever happens throughout the day , I always know . . . Sunday ! Family day ! Church this morning was great . It was so wonderful to hug and kiss all my wonderful friends that have been praying for my family these past weeks . I really just can 't describe what a joy it was . Love always abounds at our wonderful church home , but it just felt " bigger " this morning . And my ladies class was glorious as always ! We are not a big group but we are a close group . I love them all . After lunch , Mattie , Katie , Mom and I had a wonderful tea party hosted by Mattie . The " tea " was delish . This afternoon I think we are going to do some napping . At least me and my girls . And this evening some more wonderful friends are coming by for a visit , then it is time for an early bed and rest for the first day of school . Mattie tries to tell us she is not ready for school , but she has the cure , mischievous grin when she says it , so I think she 's really ready to go back . She loves to learn . So while I am taking my Sunday afternoon nap , enjoy the last two videos from the pig pen . School starts tomorrow for the students . a counselor , in middle school ! Yes ! I would say she is a saint ! I can 't imagine having to deal with middle schoolers or their parents , and in a lot of instances , she has to deal with both ! Nope ! Not me ! No way , no how ! ! ! You go girl and all the other people that are raising our " precious little darlings " while they are in your care ! ! I think she 's tired ! Such language ! From an English teacher ! ! ! Well that was her specialty . like I said , she is a counselor now ! Wonder if she uses that same mouth when talking to her students ! Hum . . . Aw Trina you know I 'm joshin ya ! And anyway , I think I heard you kinda makin fun of me at the first of that video ! Yes I had a restful day ! Whadya expect ? Me to get up and go to work or something ? ! Oh ! Now that 's funny ! Those are all I have right now . I 'm wondering if she thinks I 'm healed already ? Hum . . . I guess she could come help me with my incisions ! LOL No not her ! That would be worse than asking Katie ! I know your busy Trina ! I have loved the videos and I know you will send me more when you have time ! And even if you don 't , It 's all going to be OK ! Until next time , God bless . WOW ! ! It is Saturday ! The last Saturday of the summer ! Where did the time go ? Oh Yeah ! I 've been fighting breast cancer all summer ! ! Today Katie and I are getting manies and pedis ! So nice ! Mattie doesn 't get one this time because Frank took her to Six Flags one last time for the summer and they are on a mission . We learned a few weeks ago that the Flashback and Texas Shootout ( parachutes ) are being taken down to make room for another ride . We first heard that the Shockwave was the ride coming down and that was the plan , Frank take her one more time to ride the Shockwave as many times as she wanted . Her record is 10 times in a row , but I do know someone whose record is 23 or something like that ! Mattie loves that ride . But we soon learned it would be the Flashback that was coming down , and that was an even bigger problem . Mattie has always wanted to ride it but has always been too short ! Katie did some quick searching online and re - measured Mattie , and we think she is now tall enough to reach the line and ride it ! We certainly hope so . Frank plans to let her ride that and anything else she wants to and I know they will have a blast . And I think that beats pedis to a six year old anytime ! I didn 't post any videos yesterday . I 'm sorry . It was just one of those days that something needed to be said so I said it ! But today , back to a couple of videos ! We are not ashamed of a little boob humor ! We have to laugh through some of this stuff to keep from crying and sometimes we are doing both ! ! This video needs no set up , it is pretty self explanatory ! Sorry Frank and Katie ! I laughed , but I have NEVER considered you boobs ! Trina said it not me ! LOL And as all families do , our family has lots of inside jokes . This next video uses several of those and there is no way I can explain them all in a short amount of time . And it really takes all three of us , Trina , Traci & me , to explain them . That is half the joke , watching us re - hash what happened . So if you aren 't in on the joke , just enjoy Trina 's musical talents ! You can ask us sometime to explain ! Like on Black Friday , while we are standing in a freezing line waiting for the doors to some store to open ! One night last week , Trina texted me at an inappropriate time ( as one of us usually does ) and of course we had to ask what each other was doing . I just happened to be online doing some shopping . What ? Me shop ? Well , yes . Just listen to the video and you 'll see what an important shopping trip it was ! Bwahahahahaha ! I really do think we should go in there and see what they do when they get to me ! If we film it , we could have the winning video on a certain show ! ! ! Oh , the tears are still rolling down my cheeks ! I hope everyone has a great Saturday . I am so looking forward to Sunday ! I am going to try my hardest to go to church , balls and all ! ! ! Praise God ! He gets ALL the glory on this one . He has guided me on this path from the very beginning . And I know He Himself was in that operating room with me guiding the doctors , nurses , and anesthetists ( that was the big one for me ! ) and anyone else that had something to do in that room . I have never felt as at peace about something as I did when I woke up from surgery . For more than a week , everyone has been praying , bringing food , calling , texting and sending cards and letters . There is no way I will ever remember to tell everyone that I appreciate what they did and how much love I feel for them . I guess when you live in a small town as long as we have , you friends turn to family quickly , and we do what we can to show we care . But I think what I appreciate more than the prayers for me are the prayers for my family . Like I 've said before , cancer is hard ! It 's not just hard for me , it is hard for the ones that are closest to me . I know many of you have prayed for Frank . He has done so much . Most of y ' all don 't see him like I do , and he may say he 's OK , but I know his eyes . I also know what those eyes said to me before and after the surgery and during the days after . I didn 't think I was ever going to get him to go back to work . He gave me courage before and so much comfort after . And thank you for the prayers for Katie and Mattie . Mattie has been so worried and full of more questions than usual . Katie has needed strength to help answer those questions as honestly as possible without terrifying her ! But she is doing great and ready to meet the teacher tonight and start 1st grade on Monday ! ! ! The rest of my family has received numerous prayers too ! This has been hard on all of them too . I guess it would be easier if we weren 't all so darn close ! ! ! My mom and dad have received lots of prayers . Worry for your children doesn 't get easier just because they are adults . It is the same worry for the child whether they are infants , middle aged , or older ! Our children are our children . So what 's next ? Good questions . I still have to see an oncologist to see if there will be any other treatment . If the answer is yes , we will continue to pray and go from there . If it is no , well I really don 't know . I know we will continue to pray , prayers of thanksgiving , but I don 't know how long I will have to wait to start the reconstruction . Once that starts , it will take about a year to complete . Then hopefully I will be able to get back to life like it was ; karate , fishing , and just having fun with my family . Whatever it is , I know God is in control and he hasn 't let me down yet ! And we also know . . . I am still healing well . Today is the day I go to the doctor ! I am so ready . And anxious ! We are hoping they have the results of the test so we can move forward with my treatment . But I am also anxious in finding out about these tubes . I just wonder how long they will have to remain with me ? We will find out this afternoon ! ! Before I go to the doctor , Mom and I are going to a movie . She has not been in a movie theater in probably 20 years or more ! ! ! We are going to see " Hope Springs " with Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep , two of my favorites ! We are hoping my aunt Hysti and Traci , my cousin , will go with us ! Have a girls morning out ! ! LOL Sorry Trina and Katie , someone has to work and it ain 't gonna be one of the four of us ! LOL Trina and her children have had surgery before . It was really fun getting instructions on post - op food from an eleven year old and what would happen if I happened to eat some " gassy " foods ! So when she sent me this video on surgeons asking about M 's tonsils I really got tickled . . . BaHaHaHaHa ! ! No the surgeons didn 't ask me if I wanted to keep any souvenir from my surgery ! So you think , he 'll ask me if I want a souvenir when he removes these balls ? ! ( bulbs for you Kyle ! LOL ) And we really do have a couple of houses , mine included , that we refer to as " pig pen " . My grandmother 's is the other . We started trying to get everything ready for an estate sale back in January but we haven 't made much progress . She had so much stuff ! ! ! The closets were stuffed full and the attic a catch all for whatever could be lifted through the hole . OK , the truth is , all this stuff stuffed in the closets were mostly her grandchildren 's . I don 't know why we thought we needed to hang on to this stuff , but now we have to get rid of it . But some of the things she has in her house are equipment needed to make life a bit easier for an elderly person . Hysti knew Frank had given me one shower and knew he would have to give me more before all this healing was over with , so her suggestion came in the form of a pig pen video ! Now , what does that mean ? It means we caught it early and it hasn 't spread ! I still have to see an oncologist for him to decide treatment . So I am waiting for them to give me the appointment date ! AND , I am also still sporting these beautiful tubes and balls ! He said he could take them out today but if I still had fluid build up , I would have to have them drained with a needle . Still , after all this , I don 't like needles . So I choose to leave them in and he will look at them Monday to decide if they can come out ! So when you say your prayers tonight , say a little prayer of thanksgiving for me ! And say a little prayer for everyone you know that has been touched by this beast ! Please do it for me ! All the time , God is good . God is good , all the time ! Amen ! Everything is going to be OK ! I can 't believe this marks a full week , seven days , since I had my surgery . My emotions have changed so much in that short amount of time . I think before the surgery , I just wanted to get that horrible beast cancer out of me , even though it meant going through surgery . I did not want to do that but what option did I have ? I worked myself up so much just thinking about the surgery that the cancer really wasn 't what was scaring me . I can 't tell you the feeling of peace I had when I woke up knowing it was over . I can 't believe I have been walking around with these stupid tubes hanging out of me for seven days ! Oh they are such a pain . But I know they are just temporary , a transitional time in my life and that soon they too will be gone . I can 't believe that I have looked in the mirror for seven days and seen the scars of my surgery and no boobs and it doesn 't bother me . I just knew the first time I saw them gone that I would cry , but I didn 't . It really hasn 't bothered me . I guess me and the girls just weren 't that close ! I can 't believe the outpouring of love and support from all my family and friends . Everyone keeps telling me how great I look ! I guess now people see my face since there aren 't any boobs in the way ! LOL Not much to up date from today . I rode into town with Mom . It was nice to get out for a while . Had another amazing meal brought to us . Frank went with us on our walk tonight , a bit further than what we went last night . I got to stock up on some hugs and kisses from Mattie and she called me to tell me good night too ! I know this cancer is part of God 's plan for my life . I am still trying to figure out how I can get more people to make sure women are getting their mammograms and doing their monthly self checks . And God is such a part of this for me , I want to bring Him to more people through this too . I know there is a way . And I know God will lead my way , in his time . I just have to be patientt . And listen . It was mostly an uneventful day . Frank mowed at our house and at Mom 's . Mom fixed breakfast and my Aunt Medrice made an amazing chicken spaghetti ! I think Mom and I fought to lick the pan . Frank fixed the front door lock . Mom and I took two walks today . We watched a lot of TV and took lots of naps . Ugh ! I really hate missing church . Phil is starting a new series today and I really wanted to be there for it . I guess it 's best I didn 't try to go . Although probably no one would say a word , I don 't think it would be real appropriate for me to wear my yoga pants and pajama top to church and remember , I still can 't raise my arms to fix may hair ! I might have scared a small child if I had gone ! Traci helped me get to the SoHills web site so I could listen live , but I didn 't have all the plugins I needed so I missed it . Oh well , I can listen sometime this week from the archives . It 's not like I don 't have a lot of time on my hands ! ! Part of our karate family brought us lunch and joined us as we ate . It was delish ! ! ! We had a nice visit and the rest of the afternoon we had friends and family visiting . It was great . But the best part of the day was that Mattie May got to come home from her dad 's for the summer . I just miss that little toot when she is gone even for an hour ! She was the cherry on top to a perfect Sunday ! My day nurse was Ann and they changed shifts at seven . A CRNA came in telling me who she was and that she was going to take my vitals and that my nurse would be in later . We thought no big deal about it . In a bit some one tapped on the door and came on in . She had dark curly hair and the happiest face I had seen in a long time . She said her name was Roxanne and she was my nurse for the night . She asked me what I had done and I told her . Her next comment took me by surprise for just a second and then I fell in love . She said " Oh you 've got this ! It 's no biggy ! I am a one year survivor , just on the last bit of my reconstruction . You are doing great and have nothing to worry about ! " Then she did all that she had to do then stood at the end of my bed and said " Now tell me your story ! " It wasn 't a request or an order , but something she knew I needed to do . So Frank and I began . She stayed with us about an hour and a half . When I finished my story I asked to hear hers . And we listened . Her cancer was no great surprise as it runs in her family . She chose to have a bilateral mastectomy also with reconstruction after her treatment . When she finished her story , she looked me square in the eyes and said " You want to see them ? ! " Frank told her to wait until he could get out of the room ! He walked Katie down to her car and Roxanne and I continued to talk . Frank slept at home again and I stayed at Mom 's . Her house is just easier to get around in . It 's bigger and she is a much better house keeper than I am ! I hate cleaning ! I woke about 7 : 30 . I didn 't sleep as well last night as I have been . These balls are really starting to be annoying ! They stuck to me all night long and when I woke up this morning , one of the caps were poking into my arm . I tried to be a quite as I could when I got out of bed because Mom was still asleep which is strange for her , but she was awake shortly after . I sent Frank a text to come on out when he got ready . Mom fixed us a wonderful breakfast of eggs , Canadian bacon and English muffins . It was so good . After he left , Frank went to help me shower . I learned very quickly , I can not do that by myself . We put a chair in Mom 's shower and used the handheld shower head . He gave me one of the best hair washings I have ever had ! And the shower was typical Frank and Brandi . He was sweating and I was shivering ! It is true for us that opposites attract ! I tried really hard not to get his clothes wet because he didn 't bring any others with him . I decided that if I got him too wet , he could wear one of Mom 's robes while we dried his clothes . The toughest part of the shower was changing the dressing where these tubes are attached . Not fun ! I 'm not sure where the hospital gets their surgical tape but it must be a Super Glue product ! I think it pulled off a layer of skin . The scariest part was Frank was having trouble getting some of it off the tubing and we soon realized the gauze was wrapped around it ! After we got all the gauge off , he continued to help me clean . I really felt he missed his calling as a nurse ! Other than him squirting me in the face and trying to drown me , it went well . We tried to watch some more movies but we both fell asleep . Mom made a lasagna for supper and Katie joined us again . We wanted to take another walk but the lightning prevented us from doing so . We watched a little ( a lot ) more TV then headed off to bed , Frank and Katie at home and Mom and I at her house . It was another good day . WOW ! I slept until almost 9 AM ! And I woke up with very little pain . The biggest pain of all are these stupid drainage tubes . I have three of them , one for each breast and a third where they took the lymph node They just get in the way . And they are not very comfortable to just let them dangle . They are surgically sewn in and they told me they won 't just come out . But like I said , just a discomfort and in the way . And these " balls " have to be drained . Not our favorite thing to do , but it has to be done and the amounts recorded so I can take it to the doctor next Thursday . And Frank has really enjoyed adding some of his " man humor " about my balls as you can imagine ! It was a rather quite day . We had a few more visitors and Mom went to the grocery store . Frank and I napped a lot . Two sweet sisters from my Sunday Ladies class brought us supper . Katie joined us when she got off work . After we ate , we went for a walk up to the road . It was a nice night . We are always trying to get her to go to school to be a nurse . She has a really caring heart and we have always thought she would be very good at it . Until tonight ! Before they left for home , Frank was going to show her how to help me drain and measure these balls . She came to the restroom all ready to go . He showed her how to put some pressure on it before you take the cap off and then to turn it into . . . and that 's as far as she got ! Her face turned white and she had that " I 'm fixing to puke " face and left the bathroom ! We couldn 't help but laugh . She came back and told us she really didn 't think she could do it ! It 's all good . I can actually do it myself and Frank knows that . He 's just insistent on helping me do it . We just enjoyed the laugh at our poor daughter 's expense . I know not everyone has the wonderful and supportive husband that I have . It takes a real man to wash his wife like a baby , cry with her when she cries for no reason , and makes her laugh just because he can . I know I have a very special man . I pray for these people . I worry about them . How do they go forward from the moment they find the lump ? How do they tell themselves that everything will be OK ? What do they have faith in ? I know God will never forsake me . I know he is with me every step of this journey and that when there are only one set of footprints , they are his because he is in control . I know that as bad as this nasty cancer is , he has a plan for me . How do those with no faith know they will be OK ? I know that even if I die , I will live ! That is my faith . God is that faithful . I know he has a plan for me , he tells me so in Jeremiah 29 : 11 . I am no Bible scholar , I have trouble finding the simplest of scriptures . But I know the story of Jesus . I know what he can do for you . And I just want to tell you , if you are one of these people that want to know my God , let me know . I would love to tell you what I know about Him . He is the greatest healer I know . We both slept very well . I don 't remember the nurses coming in more than twice during the night and I was expecting them every two hours at least . I was still on a liquid diet so breakfast was cream of wheat and a mystery food we later discovered was yogurt . I had never had yogurt that kept its shape ! Rather strange ! Mom made it back to the hospital and Frank went home to take a shower and change . I just sat / laid around again and had more visitors . They told me I could take a shower but decided to wait until after Dr . Yost came in . He was in surgery all morning so it was after lunch ( tomato soup and pudding ) before he came by . He told me he wanted me out that day ! I begged to stay ( LOL ) because insurance had approved through August 17 , but he explained how my chances of infection actually were greater the longer I stayed in the hospital ! Who would of thought that ! I had a few more visitors then Frank and I decided it was time to tackle the shower ! Wow ! What a trip ! Thank goodness for the handheld sprayer ! I was no help whatsoever ! All I could do was hold these drainage tubes and he did the rest . If I ever questioned whether he loved me or not , he certainly proved he does with that shower . Thank God again for blessing me with such a wonderful , loving husband . My Aunt Hymonda provided us a yummy dinner of brisket , sausage and potatoes . I finally got to eat and it was one of the best meals I ever remember ! We had a few more visitors that evening and lots of phone calls . Frank decided to go home to sleep in our bed and get another shower in the morning . Mom and I made our way to bed not long after he left . I slept well . Not really much pain , but I was still taking my pain medicine . We got up at five and I headed to the shower , my last shower before surgery . I would never take a shower with this body in this form again . It was really starting to sink in . I was beginning to think I couldn 't go through with this , but what options did I have ? I had to get rid of this cancer and if I didn 't do the mastectomy , it just left more fuel for the fire so to speak . I knew the option I had chosen was the right one for me , I was just scared . Why did I keep trying to take this away from God ? He has it in control . I knew that , I just had to really let go this time . I put a smile on my face , got dressed and out the door we headed ! We got to the hospital a few minutes after six and Mom , and Poppa and Lorraine were there waiting for us . We hugged and talked for a little bit , then they called my name . We hugged and talked some more then Frank and I headed back to the OR . OH I was so not ready for this ! The first thing the nurse told me was that I had to have pregnancy test . Really ? Why now ? Why wasn 't this part of pre - op ? Well it was , but my test was one day old for the anesthetist . If it was positive they wouldn 't put me under and no surgery . Really ? God , I really love your sense of humor , but I wasn 't quite sure about this one ! I hadn 't had anything to drink or eat since before midnight and had already emptied my bladder before taking my shower . Seriously , where was this going to come from ? Well , I managed to get just enough in the cup for the nurse and she started getting me ready for the surgery . So glad they let Frank come back there with me . I don 't think I could have managed by myself . I was scared and full of nerves , but I kept telling myself that God was in control , it was going to be OK ! It had to be OK . I don 't know if everyone is like this before surgery . This was my first ever and I just couldn 't help it . She got the IV in my arm on the first stick , and I never looked . I just kept eye contact with Frank and again he got me through . The nurse told Frank that she was going to give me something to make me drowsy and if he wanted to kiss me , now would be the time . She gave me the meds , Frank leaned over to kiss me , and when he stood up , I asked him who he was ! He laughed , the nurse grunted . Obviously she didn 't have the best sense of humor in the mornings . I vaguely remember them putting the oxygen mask on my face and then the next thing I knew , there was a new nurse in front of me , spoon in hand full of ice chips . He was the man of my dreams at the time ! He told me I was doing great and that it wouldn 't be much longer before they would take me to my room , and it wasn 't . They rolled me down the hall in all my glory and into my room with Frank , Mom , Poppa and Lorraine all waiting to see me ! ! I think I was still pretty doped up . Mom said I tried to show everyone my incisions , even my dad ! ! ! ! Yeah ! I don 't remember that ! ! ! Frank decided he would stay with me the night . We got all situated and it didn 't take long for us to fall asleep ! It was a good day ! Filled with blessings and loved ones all around me . Sorry I haven 't posted in a few days , but it has been a whirlwind of events . I will try my best to catch you up . It is close to the end of the first part of this journey . I had made the decision to not have the immediate reconstruction done and I had to call Dr , Yost 's office to verify when my pre - op was to be done because the hospital had called the night before saying is was on Thursday and I had it down for Monday . They were right , it was on Thursday . But then the bad news - because I had decided to not have the reconstruction started at the same time , they said they might have to change my surgery date because I was scheduled in Dr , Bennett 's time not Dr . Yost . I lost it . I had to leave work . I lost all composure I had and reverted to panic mode . I was thinking I couldn 't go through with that part of the surgery but felt forced to so I didn 't have to postpone the surgery . I didn 't know what to do ! Once I got home I just continued to wait for one of the surgeons to call me . It was about lunch time when Dr . Bennett called . She said the time may be in her name but it is my surgery block and I was having my surgery whether she was there or not ! Praise God again ! I was set to go ! ! Mom picked me up to go to my pre - op and Frank met us when he got off work . He walked in at just the right time , they were taking me to x - ray and to have my blood work done . I hate having my blood drawn . He always knows how to distract me through that . We were finally done about 5 : 30 and he took me out to the dojo to see some of the kids I had been missing ! ! Frank went to Arlington for another Texas Rangers game with Dennis and I had planned to just spend the evening at home getting somethings ready for the next week . I received a surprise phone call from Buddy asking if I wanted to spend some time with Mattie May before my surgery ! My heart just melted ! How sweet ! And of course I jumped at the chance to get her for awhile . I can never thank him enough ! ! We surprised Katie and then we had a girls night out ! ! Saturday Frank was in a shoot for Habitat for Humanity and we , the girls and I , spent the day shopping and having fun . Frank and I went to the dinner Saturday night and had a blast laughing and cutting up with most of the O ' Dells . I don 't remember when we 've laughed so hard ! ! Sunday was church , family lunch , then we met with the elders for prayer over me . It was the most at peace I have felt in a long while . I love my family . It was a long day at work but I made it through , upset stomach and all . I guess I had a huge case of nerves because my stomach had ached all weekend . I didn 't eat much and wasn 't hungry , but after work , Frank and Katie wanted to take me to dinner . We went to Olive Garden ( thanks Michelle ! ) and had a great time . We got home and I started packing and had to take my first shower in antibacterial soap from head to toe . I had to get up at five the next morning for my second antibacterial shower and be at the hospital by six ! ! Dear Person that this letter is to , but you don 't know it 's about you , and probably wouldn 't figure it out even if you did happen to stumble upon my blog , I am so sorry for the inconvenience that my cancer is putting on your life . I know the adjustments you have had to make are tremendous and you shouldn 't have to deal with the added stress . Again I apologize . Next time a diseased cell tries to take over my body and kill me , I will do everything possible to make sure it fits into your schedule better than it has this time . I still can 't tell you how long my recovery time will be nor what my treatment will be or how long that will take . I know this is of great concern to you because it will have such a great impact on your life . As soon as the results come back from all the test they will do after my surgery , you will most assuredly be on the top of my call list . I know you need that info to schedule the rest of your life . This disease is all about you after all , it is barely having an impact on my life . As you my family and friends can tell , this letter is not to you . It is to the one person that will probably never read this . I can 't tell the rest of you how much your love , support and words of encouragement mean to me . Thank you all so much . I can never tell you how much I love each and every one of you . After finding out last week that I was not a candidate for TRAM - flap , I had chosen to go with the immediate reconstruction and implants . I was set and ready to go . Or so I thought . I had a few questions for both surgeons and gave them both calls . I found out that I can 't have saline implants , they have to be silicone . Not what I wanted to hear . It got me to thinking if I even wanted to have the reconstruction done at all . I just want this cancer out of me and right now and not to worry about anything else , but that is not possible . There are just too many decisions to be made in too short of a time . I wanted to laugh but all I could do was cry . I really needed to get home and get a hug from Frank . He met me at the door , and even though I had my sunshades on he knew something was wrong and that I had been crying . He gave me exactly what I needed , a great big bear hug , holding me until I had gained my composure . We went back over everything both surgeons had told me , and what we thought were the pros and cons of the immediate reconstruction . I still have not made my decision as to what I want to do , but I will . I have too before the surgery . But I have talked to Frank and Mom has made some phone calls to friends that had their mastectomies at around my age or even younger . Two ladies that chose not to have immediate reconstruction when they had their mastectomies . I feel a bit at piece tonight knowing that I can chose to have the reconstruction done later , which I knew this all along , but I had lost sight of that fact and was trying to rush things along . There is no rushing through this . Frank 's biggest concern is my self esteem after the surgery , I mean these girls have been with me since before high school . But they are not who I am . OH I will cry the first time I see them gone no doubt about that . It is going to be a major shock , of course . We know treatment could have many different side effects on top of loosing my breast . But I have never had a problem with vanity . He knows how I feel about loosing my hair . That has never been a big deal to me . Hair is hair , if I loose it , I loose it . My theory is it will grow back eventually and until it does I can rock some cute scarves and hats ! So as I go off to bed , I think I am leaning more to just having the bilateral mastectomy and leaving the reconstruction until later . Have the surgery and focus on treatment and getting healed . There is no time limit as to when I can start the reconstruction . I have so many friends and family who will love me with or without breast , just having me well and being the person I have always been . I have Katie and Mattie to get well for and they don 't really care if I have breast either , as long as they have dinner every night ( LOL ) and a story at bedtime . And I have Frank ! He is my biggest supporter of all ! He loves me too for me , a healthy me that can get back in the boat and net his fish . And I have God , my faith in him tells me I will get through this . He has been and will be with me every step of the way . Please people ! Cancer is hard ! I have learned this in just the past week and my heart goes out to those that have had it so much longer than me ! But remember in my first post when I said I was not going to be a Negative Nellie ? Well I meant it . But today it has been a bit hard . I was reminiscent of when I was pregnant with Katie . People would come up and start telling me horror stories about their second cousin twice removed 's third wives mother 's daughter 's third pregnancy and how terrible it was ! Come on people ! I didn 't want to hear those stories then and I don 't need to hear them now ! I know what the outcome could be . I know it 's not going to be a walk in the park everyday . But I really don 't need to hear that right now . If you don 't know what to say , a simple " I wish you the best " will suffice , I promise . Well , it has been seven days since I received my diagnosis . A week that has flown by . Not much happened today . Just the regular things ; work , grocery store , supper and a quick shopping trip with Katie . I bought a new bracelet ! It was just a nice day . I still have a lot of thoughts running through my mind , adding questions to the list to ask the surgeons . If I don 't write them down , I forget to ask . I get strange looks sometimes because I carry my note pad with me everywhere . How do I know when a question will pop in my head ? ! Finding out I had breast cancer was hard . And I know that things are going to get harder . I have surgery , recovery and reconstruction to go through . We won 't know about chemo until after the surgery and they check the lymph nodes . I know I am going to have to be tough . But there was something I had to do that I was not looking forward to . And I was the only one that could do it . It had to be me . I had to tell Mattie that I had this horrible disease . She is a smart girl . Her understanding of things is so different than other six year olds . We just never know how she will react to things . With Mattie , there will always be questions no matter what . I 've always said that is why she is so smart . She asks questions and her brain hangs on to them like a sponge . Every summer Mattie spends a month with her dad . We can call her any time we want , he is good about that , but it is hard to get to see her . It is after all his time and we try not to interfere with it as much as we can . And not to mean , but I didn 't want to tell him what was going on because I couldn 't take a chance on Mattie finding out from him . This is my journey and I wanted to be the one to tell her . I had to be the one to tell her . I guess I was being a little selfish . I called him to see if she could spend a little time with us while Ralph was here . He agreed and I was elated . I picked her up on Friday afternoon before anyone else got off work . This gave me a chance to talk to her . UGH ! How was I going to do this ? God give me strength ! ! I explained to her how I had gone to the doctor and he deadened my skin so I couldn 't feel anything and cut it out . I asked her if she wanted to see where it came out and of course she did . She felt of it being careful not to hurt me . She asked me if it hurt . I explained how he gave me a shot so I couldn 't feel anything but that it would hurt if it got bumped so we had to be careful when she would snuggle with me , but that it really didn 't hurt . Then we talked about the doctor sending it off the part they cut out so they could find out what it was . We talked about the word cancer and explained to her how they are bad cells , how they make people really sick . I told her these cells , this lump that she had felt was cancer and the doctors had to get rid of this from Lolo 's body . We talked about how I would go into the hospital and the doctors would get rid of this cancer by taking the tissue ( yes , she knows what that means ) out of my body . She asked me to explain what they were taking and I told her how they would take both of my breast and send them off to some other doctors that could test them and see how bad these cancer cells were . We talked about how I would look different for a while but that the doctors were going to build me some more breast to take there place . She thought about this for a little bit and this is the only time she started to cry . I told her it would be OK and the Lolo and Grumpy had both cried because we were upset these yucky cancer cells were in there . " But , " she said " I don 't want you to have to have fake boobs for the rest of your life . You 'll get tired of the straps falling down ! " After having talked to Dr . Yost yesterday , I still had a lot of things I had to talk over with Frank . From the very beginning when I found the lump , I thought I would want to have both breasts removed , but I just had to talk about it out loud and get Frank 's thoughts . I still feel the same . Today I called Dr Yost to let them know I wanted to have the bilateral mastectomy and start the reconstruction at the same time . Cene said she would contact the plastic surgeon to see how soon we could get the surgery scheduled to work on both surgeons schedule . Ralph and his family are in town for the Youth Bull Riders World Championships . Frank , Katie and I went to watch E . J . ride and spend some time with the family . After lunch , I realized I had not heard anything about an appointment with the plastic surgeon . I called Dr . Yost 's office and she gave me the info I needed and said she would have Dr . Bennett 's office call me ASAP . They called me right at 3 : 00 PM , just as we were getting to leave for Arlington to watch the Rangers . They had me an appointment scheduled for the next day at 9 : 15 AM ! I found out that they usually don 't see patients on Fridays , but when Dr . Yost told Dr . Bennett about my situation , she insisted that she would work me in ! I knew I was really going to like her . We had not been to a game all year and were really looking forward to it . It was a great game , but long ! ! It wasn 't over until almost 11 : 30 PM ! We got home around 3AM ! ! ! Mom had left for Wichita Falls again on Thursday , so I called Traci to see if she could go with me to the appointment . She was with me at the hospital the night we were hit by the drunk diver , and I knew she wouldn 't miss a thing the doctor was telling me . She is a great second set of ears ! ! ! Again , I went in thinking I knew exactly what I wanted , a TRAM - flap reconstruction . After visiting with Dr . Bennett and going over all the different possibilities for reconstruction and learning I was not a candidate for TRAM - flap , I decided to just go with the regular silicone implants . Dr . Bennett did a lot of explaining and measuring . She is great and I think I am going to be very please that she is the plastic surgeon that will be doing the work . I did learn today that no matter what type of reconstruction I chose , an immediate reconstruction is a bit misleading . Even though the reconstruction will be started the same day as the mastectomy , it will take at least a year to finish the process . Some things I am learning make me feel like I am not very smart , but then I just remind myself that I have not ever been through this before and it 's OK to not understand completely , but to just keep learning ! My surgery has been set for Tuesday August 14 . I feel so blessed that I have had the presence of mind to stay on top of this . Since finding the lump on June 29 , I am already set for surgery . And I received proof in the mail yesterday that that doesn 't always happen . I had my mammogram on July 10 , kept calling the doctor 's office after a week until they could schedule me with surgeon to do the biopsy , and had the biopsy done on June 26 , less than a month after I found the lump . But I received in the mail yesterday a letter from the women 's center telling me that the mammogram came back with a reading that needed further evaluation ! ! ! Fifteen days after I had the mammogram ! Had I not stayed on top of what was going on , I would be three weeks behind where I am ! ! ! I plan to continue to be very proactive . I just hope I don 't drive all physicians crazy ! ! ! There ! I said it out loud as I was typing just to be able to say I could say it ! So I guess it 's time to tell my story , or the beginning , because it is certainly not the end ! June 29 , 2012 Getting ready for bed , I felt something like a hair on my left breast and just like anyone else would , I reached to brush it off . And that is when I felt it . Then I felt it again . And again . Then I called Frank to come in and feel of it . It was 10 : 30 at night and we had a wedding to go to the next day so we agreed not to worry about it until Monday because truthfully there wasn 't anything we could do until then anyway . We enjoyed the weekend and celebrated with my family at the wedding of my cousin . July 2 , 2012 I started calling the doctor 's office at 8 : 30 , knowing it would take awhile to get through since it was Monday . But I got right through . They tried to put me off until later in the week , but I wouldn 't let them . I knew the PA had worked in oncology before and with a lot of women so I asked to see her . I had an appointment at 2 : 00 that same day . We went through the normal questions and breast exam and she told me what I had known would be normal procedure . I had to have a mammogram . She said she would try to get me an appointment before we left for vacation the following week . July 5 , 2012 I had not heard back from the doctor or the women 's center where I was to have the mammogram done . So I started calling . I finally got to talk to Sandra ( the PA ) . She made a few calls and had my appointment scheduled for Tuesday July 10 at 3 : 00 PM , less than 12 hours before we were to be at the airport for our vacation . July 10 , 2012 I love the women 's center at ARMC ! Every time I am in there , no matter how many people are waiting , they are friendly and loving . I had the mammogram done and they decided , as per Sandra 's orders , that a sonogram was needed also . WOW ! I could see the lump and another one much smaller below it . I got all dressed and was told to wait back in the dressing room , that the radiologist would be in to see me shortly . At that moment I just had a feeling of what was to follow and at that very second I decided I was not going to be a Negative Nellie no matter what the outcome may be , because no matter what the doctor 's tell me , God is in control of it all ! ! ! When the radiologist came in he told me that it was definitely not a cyst and would need a biopsy to determine what was in there . I called Frank and told him what they said and he agreed that we were going to stay positive and enjoy our vacation . July 11 - 18 , 2012 And vacation we did ! ! ! We traveled to Orlando , Florida for the US Open World Karate Championships , just like last year only this time , things were different , Katie got to go with us , we flew instead of driving and God had given us something to think about instead of what was going on inside of my body . Frank won 2 world titles , 2 second places , and a 4th . I won 1 world title , 2 seconds and a 4th , and Mattie May won 2 seconds and a 4th . After the competition , we enjoyed 2 1 / 2 days at Walt Disney World . We had a blast . We got to ride many of the rides that we didn 't get to last year and just really enjoyed our time together . July 18 , 2012 The first thing I did after we got home was start calling the doctors office to see if they had made my an appointment for the biopsy . This is the only day I can say I have had any type of frustration . They kept giving me the run around saying they hadn 't received a fax telling them to make the appointment and that I would have to call the women 's center to get them to fax it to them . I did call and Michelle told me that she had faxed it twice and she faxed it again while I was on the phone with her . Once she got the OK transmittal I called the doctors office again . Again they told me they hadn 't received it and that I would have to call again but even if they received it they would have to wait until the doctor was in to make the appointment . And this is the point where I lost it . I told her that they needed to call the women 's center to see why they had not received the fax because this is after all one of the reasons I pay for their services . And that the doctor did not need to be there because Sandra had already told me she could read the fax and make the appointment . I also told her that if this were her breast she would not be happy getting the run around either . My ! How fast her attitude changed and how quickly they found the fax and Sandra called me back ! Sandra had called the surgical center and they were going to schedule the appointment ( I had already told her that I would be available at any time . ) but if I had not heard back from her , to call on Friday before they closed at noon . July 20 , 2012 At 11 : 30 , I had still not heard of any appointment being scheduled for me so I called Sandra back since they close at noon on Friday 's . She told me she would call me back and in less than five minutes she called with an appointment scheduled at 1 : 45 the following Monday with the surgeon that would do the biopsy . We enjoyed the weekend by going out with some friends and renting movies all weekend . July 23 , 2012 My mom was out of town , so my Aunt Hymonda went with me to the appointment . He gave me the options on what type of biopsy they could do , needle or incision . I opted for the incision . I know ! Weird for me ! I hate to think about any type of procedure and usually go for the least invasive , but Hy and I both agreed that not only would he be able to get more tissue to test , but it would be possible he could get the entire lump . That would leave that little surprise lump in there but he wouldn 't be able to get to it either way . The biopsy was scheduled for the following Thursday . July 26 , 2012 My appointment was at 2 : 30 . Mom was back in town so she met me at the surgery center . I 'm not sure who was more nervous , Mom or me . Her worried about her only baby being cut on , or me worried about her passing out on me ! LOL If you know me , you know what a wiener I am . I have a very low tolerance for pain . I was not looking forward to getting that shot in my breast . I can 't stand it when I have to get my flu shot every year and here I was about to have a lump cut out of my breast . I made it fine through the shots and didn 't even know when he made the incision , but I did know when he started to cut the lump out . I could feel it and it didn 't take me but a couple of seconds to let him know I could . He stopped and did some more deading and we proceeded with the procedure . They told me I would probably get hot from the deading shot but I wasn 't expecting to be in an oven . When it was all over , I set up and mom and the nurse , almost at the same time , said I was looking a little pale . They got me some cool water and a fan . I was pretty shaky and mom said I was not driving home . I had to sit in there for a bit until I got some color back . While we were in there by ourselves , we decided to look at the incision together . Neither one of us passed out ! ! Yay us ! I called Frank . He was just getting off work so he met us at the house and Mom took him back to get my car . That evening we just relaxed some more and enjoyed the cool air in the house . July 31 , 2012 Dr . Yost had told me it could be late the end of the week or even the first of the following week before we heard anything back from the biopsy . So when my phone rang 10 : 15 with a local number I was not familiar with I really didn 't think much about it . But it was Dr . Yost himself . He had the results and they were not what we wanted to hear , it was breast cancer . He wanted me to come in as soon as I could , so I was at his office at 11 : 00 am . Mom met me there , but I recorded the entire conversation so Frank could hear it when he got home . I am really surprised Frank didn 't have me call him when Dr . Yost walked in the office . That 's just the way he is . He wants everything to be OK and he wants to be with me to hold my hand through it all . Dr . Yost went over the results . We still don 't know what type it is , this is just the early reading . We will get the rest of the results later on . But he wanted me to be able to start thinking about what I wanted as soon as possible . So that is the beginning of my story . I sit here watching the Olympics and waiting for Frank to get home from work . I have called the insurance to see what my coverage is . Not only is it good , God lead me to a breast cancer survivor in Mary , the CSR that handled my call . She was just like me , absolutely no history of breast cancer in her family , but she was the lucky number one that got it , then her sister three years later . I know God is in control and has an awesome plan for me . I just hope I have the patients to give it to him and not try to take it back like I always do . If you catch me doing that , please give me a gentle reminder that He is taking care of it all . Until next time , God bless . |
Today is my one month anniversary . One month ago today , I received the official diagnosis that I have breast cancer . To commemorate , I have gone back and read all my blog post from the day I went " public " with the news . After reading the post , I can 't help but think to myself " One month , is that all ? " Some of the words I wrote seem to have been written not just months ago but maybe even years ago . So much has changed in the past thirty days . I wonder how distant those words will seem in one year ? It 's strange , some of the changes that I have been through are normal already . And some of the changes I am still trying to get used to . Some changes will change themselves before I have a chance to get used to them . And I have lots more changes to come . Other than change always being a constant in our lives , one thing will never change . God is good . God is in control . Always . I am so thankful for all He has blessed me with . He has provided me with the right people to help me and travel with me on this journey . In the past month I have learned many things but the one I am reminded of daily is that cancer is hard . But with God guiding me on this journey . . . I took Mattie to breakfast then dropped her off at school . From there , I went to my house ! ! It was the first time I spent more than 30 minutes by myself there in the weeks since my surgery . It was nice just to relax and catch up on my soaps ! LOL Like I need a soap opera in my life ! For lunch , it was our monthly Ladies Lunch with a bunch of women that used to work at WTU together . It was very nice . I had not been able to attend since late last year and I really enjoyed getting to see everyone . From there I went back home and watched some more soaps . It 's hard to catch up after three weeks ! ! Late this afternoon I picked Mattie up at karate and we came out to Mom 's where Mom and Mattie cooked supper . Mattie loves to help cook . After supper , Mom and Mattie watered all the outside plants then we took a short walk . It was then time for Mattie to get her shower and in the bed . We called Grumpy then read our book . She didn 't go to sleep during the book tonight , so we just lay there and she kept patting my shoulder while I rubbed her cheek . Why can 't they just stay little longer ? I think I have kept you up to date on any news with the cancer . I have my first appointment with the oncologist Tuesday . I am so ready . I have had some new " sensations " around the surgery site . Around eleven this morning , I started having the feeling of being shocked . The first time I felt it , I actually thought I had busted a stitch . But there are no stitches on the outside to see . You know how it feels when you turn on a light and get a shock , or when the kids drag their feet on the carpet and then touch each other ? That is how this feels . And it is in the same spot on both sides . Mom and I think it is the nerves getting the feeling back after the surgery . It doesn 't really hurt , it is mostly annoying . If it continues tomorrow , I will be calling the doctor to see if this is normal . Again , it is not painful , just annoying . But this too is just one of those things that I know will pass and reminds me that . . . I wish she didn 't have to ever grow up . But I know she does or we would have a problem ! So I will enjoy her as she is as long as I can . Mom and I just spent the day together doing things that had to be done and we had lunch together at China Star . Yum ! It was so good . I now have an appointment with the oncologist ! ! ! They had told me it could be up to six weeks before they would see me , so when they called and told me next Tuesday , Sept 4 , I was pretty ecstatic ! So a bit more waiting but not the wait I was thinking it would be ! ! ! ! I just continue to be reminded . . . I knew I would be ! It was just one of those changes I had to make it through . And thanks to technology and my sweet daughter , I have first day of school pictures , and I had them probably before the morning announcements were over ! ( Hopefully I will be able to get them downloaded soon ! ) I got the tubes out ! ! ! YAY ! ! Doing a happy dance but no one is here to film me ! ! ! But trust me , I 'm doing it ! It was not the most pleasant experience I have ever had , nor was it the worst ! I 'm just glad Frank was there to hold my hand to get me through it ! ! Always an exciting day in our home . But this year is a bit different I 'm not there . When Katie was little , I always took the first day of school off or at least made arrangements to go in late so I could make her whatever she wanted for breakfast , take pictures of her getting ready , all dressed and on the way , and pictures of her arriving at school and getting to her class . Mattie started pre - k two years ago and so the tradition continued . But I 'm not there this morning . Frank and Katie are getting her ready , and they promised to take plenty of pictures for Lolo . Mattie promised to smile for those pictures . I won 't even get to pick her up from school today . My doctor 's appointment is at 3 : 00 today and that is exactly when she gets out . She will be fine . It 's just me . I have had enough change for a while and I have never liked it when I miss milestones . But things will keep changing until I know my body is completely rid of this beast and reconstruction is complete . I will make it through . I am ready for my doctor 's appointment this afternoon . I am hoping the tubes come out ! I have had enough of them . Late yesterday , I showered on my own , but with Frank within arms reach . He is leaving town after my appointment and he wanted to make sure I could do it by myself before he left . I think I proved I would be OK . Mom and Katie will be here too and I won 't do anything I 'm not supposed to without one of them nearby . Whatever happens today , Mattie going to school without me and my doctor 's appointment . I know that it is His plan . It always is . I shouldn 't question it . I have so much to be thankful for . I will continue to pray , because whatever happens throughout the day , I always know . . . Sunday ! Family day ! Church this morning was great . It was so wonderful to hug and kiss all my wonderful friends that have been praying for my family these past weeks . I really just can 't describe what a joy it was . Love always abounds at our wonderful church home , but it just felt " bigger " this morning . And my ladies class was glorious as always ! We are not a big group but we are a close group . I love them all . After lunch , Mattie , Katie , Mom and I had a wonderful tea party hosted by Mattie . The " tea " was delish . This afternoon I think we are going to do some napping . At least me and my girls . And this evening some more wonderful friends are coming by for a visit , then it is time for an early bed and rest for the first day of school . Mattie tries to tell us she is not ready for school , but she has the cure , mischievous grin when she says it , so I think she 's really ready to go back . She loves to learn . So while I am taking my Sunday afternoon nap , enjoy the last two videos from the pig pen . School starts tomorrow for the students . a counselor , in middle school ! Yes ! I would say she is a saint ! I can 't imagine having to deal with middle schoolers or their parents , and in a lot of instances , she has to deal with both ! Nope ! Not me ! No way , no how ! ! ! You go girl and all the other people that are raising our " precious little darlings " while they are in your care ! ! I think she 's tired ! Such language ! From an English teacher ! ! ! Well that was her specialty . like I said , she is a counselor now ! Wonder if she uses that same mouth when talking to her students ! Hum . . . Aw Trina you know I 'm joshin ya ! And anyway , I think I heard you kinda makin fun of me at the first of that video ! Yes I had a restful day ! Whadya expect ? Me to get up and go to work or something ? ! Oh ! Now that 's funny ! Those are all I have right now . I 'm wondering if she thinks I 'm healed already ? Hum . . . I guess she could come help me with my incisions ! LOL No not her ! That would be worse than asking Katie ! I know your busy Trina ! I have loved the videos and I know you will send me more when you have time ! And even if you don 't , It 's all going to be OK ! Until next time , God bless . WOW ! ! It is Saturday ! The last Saturday of the summer ! Where did the time go ? Oh Yeah ! I 've been fighting breast cancer all summer ! ! Today Katie and I are getting manies and pedis ! So nice ! Mattie doesn 't get one this time because Frank took her to Six Flags one last time for the summer and they are on a mission . We learned a few weeks ago that the Flashback and Texas Shootout ( parachutes ) are being taken down to make room for another ride . We first heard that the Shockwave was the ride coming down and that was the plan , Frank take her one more time to ride the Shockwave as many times as she wanted . Her record is 10 times in a row , but I do know someone whose record is 23 or something like that ! Mattie loves that ride . But we soon learned it would be the Flashback that was coming down , and that was an even bigger problem . Mattie has always wanted to ride it but has always been too short ! Katie did some quick searching online and re - measured Mattie , and we think she is now tall enough to reach the line and ride it ! We certainly hope so . Frank plans to let her ride that and anything else she wants to and I know they will have a blast . And I think that beats pedis to a six year old anytime ! I didn 't post any videos yesterday . I 'm sorry . It was just one of those days that something needed to be said so I said it ! But today , back to a couple of videos ! We are not ashamed of a little boob humor ! We have to laugh through some of this stuff to keep from crying and sometimes we are doing both ! ! This video needs no set up , it is pretty self explanatory ! Sorry Frank and Katie ! I laughed , but I have NEVER considered you boobs ! Trina said it not me ! LOL And as all families do , our family has lots of inside jokes . This next video uses several of those and there is no way I can explain them all in a short amount of time . And it really takes all three of us , Trina , Traci & me , to explain them . That is half the joke , watching us re - hash what happened . So if you aren 't in on the joke , just enjoy Trina 's musical talents ! You can ask us sometime to explain ! Like on Black Friday , while we are standing in a freezing line waiting for the doors to some store to open ! One night last week , Trina texted me at an inappropriate time ( as one of us usually does ) and of course we had to ask what each other was doing . I just happened to be online doing some shopping . What ? Me shop ? Well , yes . Just listen to the video and you 'll see what an important shopping trip it was ! Bwahahahahaha ! I really do think we should go in there and see what they do when they get to me ! If we film it , we could have the winning video on a certain show ! ! ! Oh , the tears are still rolling down my cheeks ! I hope everyone has a great Saturday . I am so looking forward to Sunday ! I am going to try my hardest to go to church , balls and all ! ! ! Praise God ! He gets ALL the glory on this one . He has guided me on this path from the very beginning . And I know He Himself was in that operating room with me guiding the doctors , nurses , and anesthetists ( that was the big one for me ! ) and anyone else that had something to do in that room . I have never felt as at peace about something as I did when I woke up from surgery . For more than a week , everyone has been praying , bringing food , calling , texting and sending cards and letters . There is no way I will ever remember to tell everyone that I appreciate what they did and how much love I feel for them . I guess when you live in a small town as long as we have , you friends turn to family quickly , and we do what we can to show we care . But I think what I appreciate more than the prayers for me are the prayers for my family . Like I 've said before , cancer is hard ! It 's not just hard for me , it is hard for the ones that are closest to me . I know many of you have prayed for Frank . He has done so much . Most of y ' all don 't see him like I do , and he may say he 's OK , but I know his eyes . I also know what those eyes said to me before and after the surgery and during the days after . I didn 't think I was ever going to get him to go back to work . He gave me courage before and so much comfort after . And thank you for the prayers for Katie and Mattie . Mattie has been so worried and full of more questions than usual . Katie has needed strength to help answer those questions as honestly as possible without terrifying her ! But she is doing great and ready to meet the teacher tonight and start 1st grade on Monday ! ! ! The rest of my family has received numerous prayers too ! This has been hard on all of them too . I guess it would be easier if we weren 't all so darn close ! ! ! My mom and dad have received lots of prayers . Worry for your children doesn 't get easier just because they are adults . It is the same worry for the child whether they are infants , middle aged , or older ! Our children are our children . So what 's next ? Good questions . I still have to see an oncologist to see if there will be any other treatment . If the answer is yes , we will continue to pray and go from there . If it is no , well I really don 't know . I know we will continue to pray , prayers of thanksgiving , but I don 't know how long I will have to wait to start the reconstruction . Once that starts , it will take about a year to complete . Then hopefully I will be able to get back to life like it was ; karate , fishing , and just having fun with my family . Whatever it is , I know God is in control and he hasn 't let me down yet ! And we also know . . . I am still healing well . Today is the day I go to the doctor ! I am so ready . And anxious ! We are hoping they have the results of the test so we can move forward with my treatment . But I am also anxious in finding out about these tubes . I just wonder how long they will have to remain with me ? We will find out this afternoon ! ! Before I go to the doctor , Mom and I are going to a movie . She has not been in a movie theater in probably 20 years or more ! ! ! We are going to see " Hope Springs " with Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep , two of my favorites ! We are hoping my aunt Hysti and Traci , my cousin , will go with us ! Have a girls morning out ! ! LOL Sorry Trina and Katie , someone has to work and it ain 't gonna be one of the four of us ! LOL Trina and her children have had surgery before . It was really fun getting instructions on post - op food from an eleven year old and what would happen if I happened to eat some " gassy " foods ! So when she sent me this video on surgeons asking about M 's tonsils I really got tickled . . . BaHaHaHaHa ! ! No the surgeons didn 't ask me if I wanted to keep any souvenir from my surgery ! So you think , he 'll ask me if I want a souvenir when he removes these balls ? ! ( bulbs for you Kyle ! LOL ) And we really do have a couple of houses , mine included , that we refer to as " pig pen " . My grandmother 's is the other . We started trying to get everything ready for an estate sale back in January but we haven 't made much progress . She had so much stuff ! ! ! The closets were stuffed full and the attic a catch all for whatever could be lifted through the hole . OK , the truth is , all this stuff stuffed in the closets were mostly her grandchildren 's . I don 't know why we thought we needed to hang on to this stuff , but now we have to get rid of it . But some of the things she has in her house are equipment needed to make life a bit easier for an elderly person . Hysti knew Frank had given me one shower and knew he would have to give me more before all this healing was over with , so her suggestion came in the form of a pig pen video ! Now , what does that mean ? It means we caught it early and it hasn 't spread ! I still have to see an oncologist for him to decide treatment . So I am waiting for them to give me the appointment date ! AND , I am also still sporting these beautiful tubes and balls ! He said he could take them out today but if I still had fluid build up , I would have to have them drained with a needle . Still , after all this , I don 't like needles . So I choose to leave them in and he will look at them Monday to decide if they can come out ! So when you say your prayers tonight , say a little prayer of thanksgiving for me ! And say a little prayer for everyone you know that has been touched by this beast ! Please do it for me ! All the time , God is good . God is good , all the time ! Amen ! Everything is going to be OK ! I can 't believe this marks a full week , seven days , since I had my surgery . My emotions have changed so much in that short amount of time . I think before the surgery , I just wanted to get that horrible beast cancer out of me , even though it meant going through surgery . I did not want to do that but what option did I have ? I worked myself up so much just thinking about the surgery that the cancer really wasn 't what was scaring me . I can 't tell you the feeling of peace I had when I woke up knowing it was over . I can 't believe I have been walking around with these stupid tubes hanging out of me for seven days ! Oh they are such a pain . But I know they are just temporary , a transitional time in my life and that soon they too will be gone . I can 't believe that I have looked in the mirror for seven days and seen the scars of my surgery and no boobs and it doesn 't bother me . I just knew the first time I saw them gone that I would cry , but I didn 't . It really hasn 't bothered me . I guess me and the girls just weren 't that close ! I can 't believe the outpouring of love and support from all my family and friends . Everyone keeps telling me how great I look ! I guess now people see my face since there aren 't any boobs in the way ! LOL Not much to up date from today . I rode into town with Mom . It was nice to get out for a while . Had another amazing meal brought to us . Frank went with us on our walk tonight , a bit further than what we went last night . I got to stock up on some hugs and kisses from Mattie and she called me to tell me good night too ! I know this cancer is part of God 's plan for my life . I am still trying to figure out how I can get more people to make sure women are getting their mammograms and doing their monthly self checks . And God is such a part of this for me , I want to bring Him to more people through this too . I know there is a way . And I know God will lead my way , in his time . I just have to be patientt . And listen . It was mostly an uneventful day . Frank mowed at our house and at Mom 's . Mom fixed breakfast and my Aunt Medrice made an amazing chicken spaghetti ! I think Mom and I fought to lick the pan . Frank fixed the front door lock . Mom and I took two walks today . We watched a lot of TV and took lots of naps . Ugh ! I really hate missing church . Phil is starting a new series today and I really wanted to be there for it . I guess it 's best I didn 't try to go . Although probably no one would say a word , I don 't think it would be real appropriate for me to wear my yoga pants and pajama top to church and remember , I still can 't raise my arms to fix may hair ! I might have scared a small child if I had gone ! Traci helped me get to the SoHills web site so I could listen live , but I didn 't have all the plugins I needed so I missed it . Oh well , I can listen sometime this week from the archives . It 's not like I don 't have a lot of time on my hands ! ! Part of our karate family brought us lunch and joined us as we ate . It was delish ! ! ! We had a nice visit and the rest of the afternoon we had friends and family visiting . It was great . But the best part of the day was that Mattie May got to come home from her dad 's for the summer . I just miss that little toot when she is gone even for an hour ! She was the cherry on top to a perfect Sunday ! My day nurse was Ann and they changed shifts at seven . A CRNA came in telling me who she was and that she was going to take my vitals and that my nurse would be in later . We thought no big deal about it . In a bit some one tapped on the door and came on in . She had dark curly hair and the happiest face I had seen in a long time . She said her name was Roxanne and she was my nurse for the night . She asked me what I had done and I told her . Her next comment took me by surprise for just a second and then I fell in love . She said " Oh you 've got this ! It 's no biggy ! I am a one year survivor , just on the last bit of my reconstruction . You are doing great and have nothing to worry about ! " Then she did all that she had to do then stood at the end of my bed and said " Now tell me your story ! " It wasn 't a request or an order , but something she knew I needed to do . So Frank and I began . She stayed with us about an hour and a half . When I finished my story I asked to hear hers . And we listened . Her cancer was no great surprise as it runs in her family . She chose to have a bilateral mastectomy also with reconstruction after her treatment . When she finished her story , she looked me square in the eyes and said " You want to see them ? ! " Frank told her to wait until he could get out of the room ! He walked Katie down to her car and Roxanne and I continued to talk . Frank slept at home again and I stayed at Mom 's . Her house is just easier to get around in . It 's bigger and she is a much better house keeper than I am ! I hate cleaning ! I woke about 7 : 30 . I didn 't sleep as well last night as I have been . These balls are really starting to be annoying ! They stuck to me all night long and when I woke up this morning , one of the caps were poking into my arm . I tried to be a quite as I could when I got out of bed because Mom was still asleep which is strange for her , but she was awake shortly after . I sent Frank a text to come on out when he got ready . Mom fixed us a wonderful breakfast of eggs , Canadian bacon and English muffins . It was so good . After he left , Frank went to help me shower . I learned very quickly , I can not do that by myself . We put a chair in Mom 's shower and used the handheld shower head . He gave me one of the best hair washings I have ever had ! And the shower was typical Frank and Brandi . He was sweating and I was shivering ! It is true for us that opposites attract ! I tried really hard not to get his clothes wet because he didn 't bring any others with him . I decided that if I got him too wet , he could wear one of Mom 's robes while we dried his clothes . The toughest part of the shower was changing the dressing where these tubes are attached . Not fun ! I 'm not sure where the hospital gets their surgical tape but it must be a Super Glue product ! I think it pulled off a layer of skin . The scariest part was Frank was having trouble getting some of it off the tubing and we soon realized the gauze was wrapped around it ! After we got all the gauge off , he continued to help me clean . I really felt he missed his calling as a nurse ! Other than him squirting me in the face and trying to drown me , it went well . We tried to watch some more movies but we both fell asleep . Mom made a lasagna for supper and Katie joined us again . We wanted to take another walk but the lightning prevented us from doing so . We watched a little ( a lot ) more TV then headed off to bed , Frank and Katie at home and Mom and I at her house . It was another good day . WOW ! I slept until almost 9 AM ! And I woke up with very little pain . The biggest pain of all are these stupid drainage tubes . I have three of them , one for each breast and a third where they took the lymph node They just get in the way . And they are not very comfortable to just let them dangle . They are surgically sewn in and they told me they won 't just come out . But like I said , just a discomfort and in the way . And these " balls " have to be drained . Not our favorite thing to do , but it has to be done and the amounts recorded so I can take it to the doctor next Thursday . And Frank has really enjoyed adding some of his " man humor " about my balls as you can imagine ! It was a rather quite day . We had a few more visitors and Mom went to the grocery store . Frank and I napped a lot . Two sweet sisters from my Sunday Ladies class brought us supper . Katie joined us when she got off work . After we ate , we went for a walk up to the road . It was a nice night . We are always trying to get her to go to school to be a nurse . She has a really caring heart and we have always thought she would be very good at it . Until tonight ! Before they left for home , Frank was going to show her how to help me drain and measure these balls . She came to the restroom all ready to go . He showed her how to put some pressure on it before you take the cap off and then to turn it into . . . and that 's as far as she got ! Her face turned white and she had that " I 'm fixing to puke " face and left the bathroom ! We couldn 't help but laugh . She came back and told us she really didn 't think she could do it ! It 's all good . I can actually do it myself and Frank knows that . He 's just insistent on helping me do it . We just enjoyed the laugh at our poor daughter 's expense . I know not everyone has the wonderful and supportive husband that I have . It takes a real man to wash his wife like a baby , cry with her when she cries for no reason , and makes her laugh just because he can . I know I have a very special man . I pray for these people . I worry about them . How do they go forward from the moment they find the lump ? How do they tell themselves that everything will be OK ? What do they have faith in ? I know God will never forsake me . I know he is with me every step of this journey and that when there are only one set of footprints , they are his because he is in control . I know that as bad as this nasty cancer is , he has a plan for me . How do those with no faith know they will be OK ? I know that even if I die , I will live ! That is my faith . God is that faithful . I know he has a plan for me , he tells me so in Jeremiah 29 : 11 . I am no Bible scholar , I have trouble finding the simplest of scriptures . But I know the story of Jesus . I know what he can do for you . And I just want to tell you , if you are one of these people that want to know my God , let me know . I would love to tell you what I know about Him . He is the greatest healer I know . We both slept very well . I don 't remember the nurses coming in more than twice during the night and I was expecting them every two hours at least . I was still on a liquid diet so breakfast was cream of wheat and a mystery food we later discovered was yogurt . I had never had yogurt that kept its shape ! Rather strange ! Mom made it back to the hospital and Frank went home to take a shower and change . I just sat / laid around again and had more visitors . They told me I could take a shower but decided to wait until after Dr . Yost came in . He was in surgery all morning so it was after lunch ( tomato soup and pudding ) before he came by . He told me he wanted me out that day ! I begged to stay ( LOL ) because insurance had approved through August 17 , but he explained how my chances of infection actually were greater the longer I stayed in the hospital ! Who would of thought that ! I had a few more visitors then Frank and I decided it was time to tackle the shower ! Wow ! What a trip ! Thank goodness for the handheld sprayer ! I was no help whatsoever ! All I could do was hold these drainage tubes and he did the rest . If I ever questioned whether he loved me or not , he certainly proved he does with that shower . Thank God again for blessing me with such a wonderful , loving husband . My Aunt Hymonda provided us a yummy dinner of brisket , sausage and potatoes . I finally got to eat and it was one of the best meals I ever remember ! We had a few more visitors that evening and lots of phone calls . Frank decided to go home to sleep in our bed and get another shower in the morning . Mom and I made our way to bed not long after he left . I slept well . Not really much pain , but I was still taking my pain medicine . We got up at five and I headed to the shower , my last shower before surgery . I would never take a shower with this body in this form again . It was really starting to sink in . I was beginning to think I couldn 't go through with this , but what options did I have ? I had to get rid of this cancer and if I didn 't do the mastectomy , it just left more fuel for the fire so to speak . I knew the option I had chosen was the right one for me , I was just scared . Why did I keep trying to take this away from God ? He has it in control . I knew that , I just had to really let go this time . I put a smile on my face , got dressed and out the door we headed ! We got to the hospital a few minutes after six and Mom , and Poppa and Lorraine were there waiting for us . We hugged and talked for a little bit , then they called my name . We hugged and talked some more then Frank and I headed back to the OR . OH I was so not ready for this ! The first thing the nurse told me was that I had to have pregnancy test . Really ? Why now ? Why wasn 't this part of pre - op ? Well it was , but my test was one day old for the anesthetist . If it was positive they wouldn 't put me under and no surgery . Really ? God , I really love your sense of humor , but I wasn 't quite sure about this one ! I hadn 't had anything to drink or eat since before midnight and had already emptied my bladder before taking my shower . Seriously , where was this going to come from ? Well , I managed to get just enough in the cup for the nurse and she started getting me ready for the surgery . So glad they let Frank come back there with me . I don 't think I could have managed by myself . I was scared and full of nerves , but I kept telling myself that God was in control , it was going to be OK ! It had to be OK . I don 't know if everyone is like this before surgery . This was my first ever and I just couldn 't help it . She got the IV in my arm on the first stick , and I never looked . I just kept eye contact with Frank and again he got me through . The nurse told Frank that she was going to give me something to make me drowsy and if he wanted to kiss me , now would be the time . She gave me the meds , Frank leaned over to kiss me , and when he stood up , I asked him who he was ! He laughed , the nurse grunted . Obviously she didn 't have the best sense of humor in the mornings . I vaguely remember them putting the oxygen mask on my face and then the next thing I knew , there was a new nurse in front of me , spoon in hand full of ice chips . He was the man of my dreams at the time ! He told me I was doing great and that it wouldn 't be much longer before they would take me to my room , and it wasn 't . They rolled me down the hall in all my glory and into my room with Frank , Mom , Poppa and Lorraine all waiting to see me ! ! I think I was still pretty doped up . Mom said I tried to show everyone my incisions , even my dad ! ! ! ! Yeah ! I don 't remember that ! ! ! Frank decided he would stay with me the night . We got all situated and it didn 't take long for us to fall asleep ! It was a good day ! Filled with blessings and loved ones all around me . Sorry I haven 't posted in a few days , but it has been a whirlwind of events . I will try my best to catch you up . It is close to the end of the first part of this journey . I had made the decision to not have the immediate reconstruction done and I had to call Dr , Yost 's office to verify when my pre - op was to be done because the hospital had called the night before saying is was on Thursday and I had it down for Monday . They were right , it was on Thursday . But then the bad news - because I had decided to not have the reconstruction started at the same time , they said they might have to change my surgery date because I was scheduled in Dr , Bennett 's time not Dr . Yost . I lost it . I had to leave work . I lost all composure I had and reverted to panic mode . I was thinking I couldn 't go through with that part of the surgery but felt forced to so I didn 't have to postpone the surgery . I didn 't know what to do ! Once I got home I just continued to wait for one of the surgeons to call me . It was about lunch time when Dr . Bennett called . She said the time may be in her name but it is my surgery block and I was having my surgery whether she was there or not ! Praise God again ! I was set to go ! ! Mom picked me up to go to my pre - op and Frank met us when he got off work . He walked in at just the right time , they were taking me to x - ray and to have my blood work done . I hate having my blood drawn . He always knows how to distract me through that . We were finally done about 5 : 30 and he took me out to the dojo to see some of the kids I had been missing ! ! Frank went to Arlington for another Texas Rangers game with Dennis and I had planned to just spend the evening at home getting somethings ready for the next week . I received a surprise phone call from Buddy asking if I wanted to spend some time with Mattie May before my surgery ! My heart just melted ! How sweet ! And of course I jumped at the chance to get her for awhile . I can never thank him enough ! ! We surprised Katie and then we had a girls night out ! ! Saturday Frank was in a shoot for Habitat for Humanity and we , the girls and I , spent the day shopping and having fun . Frank and I went to the dinner Saturday night and had a blast laughing and cutting up with most of the O ' Dells . I don 't remember when we 've laughed so hard ! ! Sunday was church , family lunch , then we met with the elders for prayer over me . It was the most at peace I have felt in a long while . I love my family . It was a long day at work but I made it through , upset stomach and all . I guess I had a huge case of nerves because my stomach had ached all weekend . I didn 't eat much and wasn 't hungry , but after work , Frank and Katie wanted to take me to dinner . We went to Olive Garden ( thanks Michelle ! ) and had a great time . We got home and I started packing and had to take my first shower in antibacterial soap from head to toe . I had to get up at five the next morning for my second antibacterial shower and be at the hospital by six ! ! Dear Person that this letter is to , but you don 't know it 's about you , and probably wouldn 't figure it out even if you did happen to stumble upon my blog , I am so sorry for the inconvenience that my cancer is putting on your life . I know the adjustments you have had to make are tremendous and you shouldn 't have to deal with the added stress . Again I apologize . Next time a diseased cell tries to take over my body and kill me , I will do everything possible to make sure it fits into your schedule better than it has this time . I still can 't tell you how long my recovery time will be nor what my treatment will be or how long that will take . I know this is of great concern to you because it will have such a great impact on your life . As soon as the results come back from all the test they will do after my surgery , you will most assuredly be on the top of my call list . I know you need that info to schedule the rest of your life . This disease is all about you after all , it is barely having an impact on my life . As you my family and friends can tell , this letter is not to you . It is to the one person that will probably never read this . I can 't tell the rest of you how much your love , support and words of encouragement mean to me . Thank you all so much . I can never tell you how much I love each and every one of you . After finding out last week that I was not a candidate for TRAM - flap , I had chosen to go with the immediate reconstruction and implants . I was set and ready to go . Or so I thought . I had a few questions for both surgeons and gave them both calls . I found out that I can 't have saline implants , they have to be silicone . Not what I wanted to hear . It got me to thinking if I even wanted to have the reconstruction done at all . I just want this cancer out of me and right now and not to worry about anything else , but that is not possible . There are just too many decisions to be made in too short of a time . I wanted to laugh but all I could do was cry . I really needed to get home and get a hug from Frank . He met me at the door , and even though I had my sunshades on he knew something was wrong and that I had been crying . He gave me exactly what I needed , a great big bear hug , holding me until I had gained my composure . We went back over everything both surgeons had told me , and what we thought were the pros and cons of the immediate reconstruction . I still have not made my decision as to what I want to do , but I will . I have too before the surgery . But I have talked to Frank and Mom has made some phone calls to friends that had their mastectomies at around my age or even younger . Two ladies that chose not to have immediate reconstruction when they had their mastectomies . I feel a bit at piece tonight knowing that I can chose to have the reconstruction done later , which I knew this all along , but I had lost sight of that fact and was trying to rush things along . There is no rushing through this . Frank 's biggest concern is my self esteem after the surgery , I mean these girls have been with me since before high school . But they are not who I am . OH I will cry the first time I see them gone no doubt about that . It is going to be a major shock , of course . We know treatment could have many different side effects on top of loosing my breast . But I have never had a problem with vanity . He knows how I feel about loosing my hair . That has never been a big deal to me . Hair is hair , if I loose it , I loose it . My theory is it will grow back eventually and until it does I can rock some cute scarves and hats ! So as I go off to bed , I think I am leaning more to just having the bilateral mastectomy and leaving the reconstruction until later . Have the surgery and focus on treatment and getting healed . There is no time limit as to when I can start the reconstruction . I have so many friends and family who will love me with or without breast , just having me well and being the person I have always been . I have Katie and Mattie to get well for and they don 't really care if I have breast either , as long as they have dinner every night ( LOL ) and a story at bedtime . And I have Frank ! He is my biggest supporter of all ! He loves me too for me , a healthy me that can get back in the boat and net his fish . And I have God , my faith in him tells me I will get through this . He has been and will be with me every step of the way . Please people ! Cancer is hard ! I have learned this in just the past week and my heart goes out to those that have had it so much longer than me ! But remember in my first post when I said I was not going to be a Negative Nellie ? Well I meant it . But today it has been a bit hard . I was reminiscent of when I was pregnant with Katie . People would come up and start telling me horror stories about their second cousin twice removed 's third wives mother 's daughter 's third pregnancy and how terrible it was ! Come on people ! I didn 't want to hear those stories then and I don 't need to hear them now ! I know what the outcome could be . I know it 's not going to be a walk in the park everyday . But I really don 't need to hear that right now . If you don 't know what to say , a simple " I wish you the best " will suffice , I promise . Well , it has been seven days since I received my diagnosis . A week that has flown by . Not much happened today . Just the regular things ; work , grocery store , supper and a quick shopping trip with Katie . I bought a new bracelet ! It was just a nice day . I still have a lot of thoughts running through my mind , adding questions to the list to ask the surgeons . If I don 't write them down , I forget to ask . I get strange looks sometimes because I carry my note pad with me everywhere . How do I know when a question will pop in my head ? ! Finding out I had breast cancer was hard . And I know that things are going to get harder . I have surgery , recovery and reconstruction to go through . We won 't know about chemo until after the surgery and they check the lymph nodes . I know I am going to have to be tough . But there was something I had to do that I was not looking forward to . And I was the only one that could do it . It had to be me . I had to tell Mattie that I had this horrible disease . She is a smart girl . Her understanding of things is so different than other six year olds . We just never know how she will react to things . With Mattie , there will always be questions no matter what . I 've always said that is why she is so smart . She asks questions and her brain hangs on to them like a sponge . Every summer Mattie spends a month with her dad . We can call her any time we want , he is good about that , but it is hard to get to see her . It is after all his time and we try not to interfere with it as much as we can . And not to mean , but I didn 't want to tell him what was going on because I couldn 't take a chance on Mattie finding out from him . This is my journey and I wanted to be the one to tell her . I had to be the one to tell her . I guess I was being a little selfish . I called him to see if she could spend a little time with us while Ralph was here . He agreed and I was elated . I picked her up on Friday afternoon before anyone else got off work . This gave me a chance to talk to her . UGH ! How was I going to do this ? God give me strength ! ! I explained to her how I had gone to the doctor and he deadened my skin so I couldn 't feel anything and cut it out . I asked her if she wanted to see where it came out and of course she did . She felt of it being careful not to hurt me . She asked me if it hurt . I explained how he gave me a shot so I couldn 't feel anything but that it would hurt if it got bumped so we had to be careful when she would snuggle with me , but that it really didn 't hurt . Then we talked about the doctor sending it off the part they cut out so they could find out what it was . We talked about the word cancer and explained to her how they are bad cells , how they make people really sick . I told her these cells , this lump that she had felt was cancer and the doctors had to get rid of this from Lolo 's body . We talked about how I would go into the hospital and the doctors would get rid of this cancer by taking the tissue ( yes , she knows what that means ) out of my body . She asked me to explain what they were taking and I told her how they would take both of my breast and send them off to some other doctors that could test them and see how bad these cancer cells were . We talked about how I would look different for a while but that the doctors were going to build me some more breast to take there place . She thought about this for a little bit and this is the only time she started to cry . I told her it would be OK and the Lolo and Grumpy had both cried because we were upset these yucky cancer cells were in there . " But , " she said " I don 't want you to have to have fake boobs for the rest of your life . You 'll get tired of the straps falling down ! " After having talked to Dr . Yost yesterday , I still had a lot of things I had to talk over with Frank . From the very beginning when I found the lump , I thought I would want to have both breasts removed , but I just had to talk about it out loud and get Frank 's thoughts . I still feel the same . Today I called Dr Yost to let them know I wanted to have the bilateral mastectomy and start the reconstruction at the same time . Cene said she would contact the plastic surgeon to see how soon we could get the surgery scheduled to work on both surgeons schedule . Ralph and his family are in town for the Youth Bull Riders World Championships . Frank , Katie and I went to watch E . J . ride and spend some time with the family . After lunch , I realized I had not heard anything about an appointment with the plastic surgeon . I called Dr . Yost 's office and she gave me the info I needed and said she would have Dr . Bennett 's office call me ASAP . They called me right at 3 : 00 PM , just as we were getting to leave for Arlington to watch the Rangers . They had me an appointment scheduled for the next day at 9 : 15 AM ! I found out that they usually don 't see patients on Fridays , but when Dr . Yost told Dr . Bennett about my situation , she insisted that she would work me in ! I knew I was really going to like her . We had not been to a game all year and were really looking forward to it . It was a great game , but long ! ! It wasn 't over until almost 11 : 30 PM ! We got home around 3AM ! ! ! Mom had left for Wichita Falls again on Thursday , so I called Traci to see if she could go with me to the appointment . She was with me at the hospital the night we were hit by the drunk diver , and I knew she wouldn 't miss a thing the doctor was telling me . She is a great second set of ears ! ! ! Again , I went in thinking I knew exactly what I wanted , a TRAM - flap reconstruction . After visiting with Dr . Bennett and going over all the different possibilities for reconstruction and learning I was not a candidate for TRAM - flap , I decided to just go with the regular silicone implants . Dr . Bennett did a lot of explaining and measuring . She is great and I think I am going to be very please that she is the plastic surgeon that will be doing the work . I did learn today that no matter what type of reconstruction I chose , an immediate reconstruction is a bit misleading . Even though the reconstruction will be started the same day as the mastectomy , it will take at least a year to finish the process . Some things I am learning make me feel like I am not very smart , but then I just remind myself that I have not ever been through this before and it 's OK to not understand completely , but to just keep learning ! My surgery has been set for Tuesday August 14 . I feel so blessed that I have had the presence of mind to stay on top of this . Since finding the lump on June 29 , I am already set for surgery . And I received proof in the mail yesterday that that doesn 't always happen . I had my mammogram on July 10 , kept calling the doctor 's office after a week until they could schedule me with surgeon to do the biopsy , and had the biopsy done on June 26 , less than a month after I found the lump . But I received in the mail yesterday a letter from the women 's center telling me that the mammogram came back with a reading that needed further evaluation ! ! ! Fifteen days after I had the mammogram ! Had I not stayed on top of what was going on , I would be three weeks behind where I am ! ! ! I plan to continue to be very proactive . I just hope I don 't drive all physicians crazy ! ! ! There ! I said it out loud as I was typing just to be able to say I could say it ! So I guess it 's time to tell my story , or the beginning , because it is certainly not the end ! June 29 , 2012 Getting ready for bed , I felt something like a hair on my left breast and just like anyone else would , I reached to brush it off . And that is when I felt it . Then I felt it again . And again . Then I called Frank to come in and feel of it . It was 10 : 30 at night and we had a wedding to go to the next day so we agreed not to worry about it until Monday because truthfully there wasn 't anything we could do until then anyway . We enjoyed the weekend and celebrated with my family at the wedding of my cousin . July 2 , 2012 I started calling the doctor 's office at 8 : 30 , knowing it would take awhile to get through since it was Monday . But I got right through . They tried to put me off until later in the week , but I wouldn 't let them . I knew the PA had worked in oncology before and with a lot of women so I asked to see her . I had an appointment at 2 : 00 that same day . We went through the normal questions and breast exam and she told me what I had known would be normal procedure . I had to have a mammogram . She said she would try to get me an appointment before we left for vacation the following week . July 5 , 2012 I had not heard back from the doctor or the women 's center where I was to have the mammogram done . So I started calling . I finally got to talk to Sandra ( the PA ) . She made a few calls and had my appointment scheduled for Tuesday July 10 at 3 : 00 PM , less than 12 hours before we were to be at the airport for our vacation . July 10 , 2012 I love the women 's center at ARMC ! Every time I am in there , no matter how many people are waiting , they are friendly and loving . I had the mammogram done and they decided , as per Sandra 's orders , that a sonogram was needed also . WOW ! I could see the lump and another one much smaller below it . I got all dressed and was told to wait back in the dressing room , that the radiologist would be in to see me shortly . At that moment I just had a feeling of what was to follow and at that very second I decided I was not going to be a Negative Nellie no matter what the outcome may be , because no matter what the doctor 's tell me , God is in control of it all ! ! ! When the radiologist came in he told me that it was definitely not a cyst and would need a biopsy to determine what was in there . I called Frank and told him what they said and he agreed that we were going to stay positive and enjoy our vacation . July 11 - 18 , 2012 And vacation we did ! ! ! We traveled to Orlando , Florida for the US Open World Karate Championships , just like last year only this time , things were different , Katie got to go with us , we flew instead of driving and God had given us something to think about instead of what was going on inside of my body . Frank won 2 world titles , 2 second places , and a 4th . I won 1 world title , 2 seconds and a 4th , and Mattie May won 2 seconds and a 4th . After the competition , we enjoyed 2 1 / 2 days at Walt Disney World . We had a blast . We got to ride many of the rides that we didn 't get to last year and just really enjoyed our time together . July 18 , 2012 The first thing I did after we got home was start calling the doctors office to see if they had made my an appointment for the biopsy . This is the only day I can say I have had any type of frustration . They kept giving me the run around saying they hadn 't received a fax telling them to make the appointment and that I would have to call the women 's center to get them to fax it to them . I did call and Michelle told me that she had faxed it twice and she faxed it again while I was on the phone with her . Once she got the OK transmittal I called the doctors office again . Again they told me they hadn 't received it and that I would have to call again but even if they received it they would have to wait until the doctor was in to make the appointment . And this is the point where I lost it . I told her that they needed to call the women 's center to see why they had not received the fax because this is after all one of the reasons I pay for their services . And that the doctor did not need to be there because Sandra had already told me she could read the fax and make the appointment . I also told her that if this were her breast she would not be happy getting the run around either . My ! How fast her attitude changed and how quickly they found the fax and Sandra called me back ! Sandra had called the surgical center and they were going to schedule the appointment ( I had already told her that I would be available at any time . ) but if I had not heard back from her , to call on Friday before they closed at noon . July 20 , 2012 At 11 : 30 , I had still not heard of any appointment being scheduled for me so I called Sandra back since they close at noon on Friday 's . She told me she would call me back and in less than five minutes she called with an appointment scheduled at 1 : 45 the following Monday with the surgeon that would do the biopsy . We enjoyed the weekend by going out with some friends and renting movies all weekend . July 23 , 2012 My mom was out of town , so my Aunt Hymonda went with me to the appointment . He gave me the options on what type of biopsy they could do , needle or incision . I opted for the incision . I know ! Weird for me ! I hate to think about any type of procedure and usually go for the least invasive , but Hy and I both agreed that not only would he be able to get more tissue to test , but it would be possible he could get the entire lump . That would leave that little surprise lump in there but he wouldn 't be able to get to it either way . The biopsy was scheduled for the following Thursday . July 26 , 2012 My appointment was at 2 : 30 . Mom was back in town so she met me at the surgery center . I 'm not sure who was more nervous , Mom or me . Her worried about her only baby being cut on , or me worried about her passing out on me ! LOL If you know me , you know what a wiener I am . I have a very low tolerance for pain . I was not looking forward to getting that shot in my breast . I can 't stand it when I have to get my flu shot every year and here I was about to have a lump cut out of my breast . I made it fine through the shots and didn 't even know when he made the incision , but I did know when he started to cut the lump out . I could feel it and it didn 't take me but a couple of seconds to let him know I could . He stopped and did some more deading and we proceeded with the procedure . They told me I would probably get hot from the deading shot but I wasn 't expecting to be in an oven . When it was all over , I set up and mom and the nurse , almost at the same time , said I was looking a little pale . They got me some cool water and a fan . I was pretty shaky and mom said I was not driving home . I had to sit in there for a bit until I got some color back . While we were in there by ourselves , we decided to look at the incision together . Neither one of us passed out ! ! Yay us ! I called Frank . He was just getting off work so he met us at the house and Mom took him back to get my car . That evening we just relaxed some more and enjoyed the cool air in the house . July 31 , 2012 Dr . Yost had told me it could be late the end of the week or even the first of the following week before we heard anything back from the biopsy . So when my phone rang 10 : 15 with a local number I was not familiar with I really didn 't think much about it . But it was Dr . Yost himself . He had the results and they were not what we wanted to hear , it was breast cancer . He wanted me to come in as soon as I could , so I was at his office at 11 : 00 am . Mom met me there , but I recorded the entire conversation so Frank could hear it when he got home . I am really surprised Frank didn 't have me call him when Dr . Yost walked in the office . That 's just the way he is . He wants everything to be OK and he wants to be with me to hold my hand through it all . Dr . Yost went over the results . We still don 't know what type it is , this is just the early reading . We will get the rest of the results later on . But he wanted me to be able to start thinking about what I wanted as soon as possible . So that is the beginning of my story . I sit here watching the Olympics and waiting for Frank to get home from work . I have called the insurance to see what my coverage is . Not only is it good , God lead me to a breast cancer survivor in Mary , the CSR that handled my call . She was just like me , absolutely no history of breast cancer in her family , but she was the lucky number one that got it , then her sister three years later . I know God is in control and has an awesome plan for me . I just hope I have the patients to give it to him and not try to take it back like I always do . If you catch me doing that , please give me a gentle reminder that He is taking care of it all . Until next time , God bless . |
This year I am thankful for the two guys in my life . I have the most amazing husband who would do anything for me , and the most adorable little son ! ! ! I am Thankful that he has been healthy recently , is catching up developmentally , and has gained 5 lbs since coming back from the hospital a few weeks ago . He now weighs 14 lbs ! I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to be apart of his life and watch him as he changes on an everyday basis . We are thankful for our family , friends , and supportors around the world who pray for us daily , and support us in being here . We couldn 't do it with out you ! We are also thankful that we were called here ; it 's such a blessing to live and work with the Haitian people . The children here are amazing and make me smile everyday ! Lastly , I am thankful for the amazing feast that we were able to have yesterday . The mission that brings us our mail brought us a turkey , rolls , stuffing , pumpkin pie , etc . We also had apple crisp , fresh watermelon , sweet potatoes , mashed potatoes , and more ! ! We ate so much , it actually felt like Thanksgiving ! Eventz enjoyed his first Thanksgiving , but I think the turkey got to him to fast . He feel asleep in my arms before even finishing his dinner ! He was so excited about the food ! Eventz looked adorable dressed up in his kahki pants and nice red dress shirt ! Now that Thanksgiving is officially over , we have moved on to Christmas ! Tonight we turned on some Christmas music , set up our Christmas tree , and decorated our apartment ! I never thought I would see the day when Nick and I would have a fake tree , but there really aren 't any trees here we would want to bring into our house ! Nick was extremely disappointed that we couldn 't find any light to put on our tree . Eventz slept through the whole process ! When we were done we had warm chocolate chip cookies and watched a Veggietales Christmas story . The latest statistics are that 1600 people have died of Cholera in Haiti , and that over 18 , 000 have gotten sick from it . As I have stated before , these are just the reported cases , THERE ARE SO MANY MORE . These are just the people who have been able to afford a trip to the hospital , many can 't afford this . So many people are getting sick and dying at their homes , or in the country side . Estimates say that approximately 200 , 000 people will become sick from this bacteria . I read that the expected death rate for this was 1 % . In Port Au Prince , the actual death rate is 4 % , and in Cap Haitien , it 's 7 . 5 % . That ridiculous since this is a curable bacteria . All that they need when they get this is an IV and rehydration fluids . They will be miserable for a while , but if treated fast enough , should be able to leave the hospital in less than 48 hours . The local hospital here has been maintaining an average of 60 - 80 Cholera patients . Many are discharged , but others keep coming in . Amy went to a clinic in Limbe a few days ago and is there again today to help with Cholera patients . She kept saying how understaffed they are and how much work they have to do . She put in IV 's all day and ran around changing IV bags . The way she described the clinic was horrible . A lot of people here are wearing masks , think this will help prevent them from getting this bacteria , even though it isn 't airborne . Rumors here spread like wild fires and might as well be fact . That is part of the reason why so many people are dying of this , many simply don 't know how to prevent it or treat it once they are sick . Education is key . There is a blog that I read of a guy who lives in Port au Prince . I 'm not sure that I should put this on here because it 's a bit graphic , but he just wrote a post about Cholera there . He has some pictures , that again are graphic , but , it shows what is really happening . If you are interested in reading his post , you can click here . I don 't add this to make you pity those who are sick , but just to inform you of what is really happening here . There hasn 't been any rioting in Cap Haitien for almost a week now . Nick has been in town several times and says that it is completely fine . You can still see heaps of metal which are left from all the tires that were burnt . Tomorrow is election day , so many are afraid that the rioting will start up again . Normally most political unrest is in Port au Prince , but we are unsure if we will see any effects of it up here . I was in the process of getting my three kids up from their naps and getting them snacks , when Amy asked if I wanted to go with her to Milot . I got super excited as this was the first time I have left the compound since getting back , and also the first time that Amy and I have ever gone anywhere together . I quickly found Nick , told him he was in charge of the kids , and jumped in the truck ready for an adventure . Everything in Haiti is always an adventure , you never know what to expect when you leave the gate . We were going to pick up a little boy who used to live here and his Mom from the hospital . Normally we would just drop them off at the intersection where we would go left and they go right , however , Amy and I were both curious where they lived so we asked if she wanted us to take her all the way home . She was beyond thankful . It was getting late , and there was no way she could have walked the few miles home before dark . She walks the several miles to COTP once a week for us to evaluate her son , carrying him as he is an infant , with his oversized diaper bag that we always send them off with on her head , and her young daughter by her side . She told us that it normally takes her 3 plus hours to walk and see us . This is one way . I can 't imagine walking that far with that much stuff . Anyways , we went down this road that didn 't look like a vehicle had passed through in years . It was overgrown , full of giant pot holes ( nothing like what you see in the states ) that were muddy and a mess . We weren 't sure if we would be able to make it , but she said we could and she was right . When we pulled up in front of her house , everyone was excited to see her and ask her about the past few days that she had spent in the hospital with her son . I would assume that many of them have never been able to afford to take their children to the hospital when they were sick , so this was a new exciting adventure for them that they were able to live through her . She was like a celebrity , pulling up in a truck after spending a week in a hospital . When we left Milot , someone asked her how she was getting home and she said she was going in the truck with a giant smile on her face . It 's quite possible that she had never been in a truck before meeting us . She asked us if we wanted to see her house , and we said us . We walked down the muddy pathway about 100 yards to her house . There are several different types of houses in Haiti , and she by far lives in the worse . Her house is made of sticks and mud and has cardboard filling as many gaps as she could find . Living in Haiti I 'm surrounded by these houses , but you always hold on to a hope that even though it looks like nothing , it 's nice on the inside . It 's not true , its worse on the inside . There is nothing there . NOTHING . It 's an uneven dirt floor . The entire house is smaller than Nick and I 's bedroom here , and she is raising a family in it . She has no cooking utensils , no toys for her children , NOTHING . Her front door wasn 't even on it 's hinges , she just moved it and we walked in . It wasn 't even a door like what we use . Her neighbor pulled over two chairs for us to sit in , and about 15 people gathered around to talk to us . When we left they all followed us out to the car and said goodbye . This lady is an amazing Mom . She constantly kisses her child , which isn 't seen here a lot . He always lays his head on her shoulder , cuddling in close , and when someone else tries to hold him , he reaches back for his Mom . He doesn 't want anyone else . He loves his Mom . Last night reminded me of how little most Haitians have . Here at COTP , we live in a little paradise . We are locked in our gate , with plenty of food , medicine , and are surrounded by happy healthy kids . Yes , the children are sick when they come to us , but only for a short time , and then they turn around so quickly . It 's easy to forget about what happens outside the gate . It 's hard to get out because there is always so much going on here , but when I do , I am glad that I am reminded of how people live everyday . Before I talk about the adventure I had getting back to COTP I want to thank everyone that had a part in our trip back to the states . First the limited and already overworked Staff at COTP had to take on extra responsibilities with not much notice of our absence . Thank you to Jamie and Jenny who hosted us at Minnesota , we had a wonderful time getting to know everyone and talking about our long future here at COTP . Finally our Families who we completely surprised , they dropped all of their plans and spend wonderful time with us . I truly enjoyed being home and it really re - energized me into coming back ! My journey back to COTP was an adventure to say the least . I used the phrase many times " we have more time than money " , so for instance when booking our tickets and planned the trip I opted for 2 layovers between Portland and Flordia . I will say that the trip back was normal and a perfect success , some might disagree , its all relative . I arrived at PDX a good 2 hours before my flight to Sacrament , where I had my first layover . When I arrived I was through check in , through security in 5 minutes and at the gate in another 3 . Everything so far was going perfectly . We landed in Sacramento and I needed to switch planes . Unfortunately the plane I was suppose to go to Denver on was broken so they re - assigned us to a different gate . After they figured out that there were logistical problems with the gate that they assigned to us they gave us a different gate and delayed the plane 20 min . About 40 minutes after the plane was supposed to leave we left for Denver . I began to consider that I only have 70 minutes from when I land in Fort Lauderdale in Terminal 1 to get to Terminal 4 , check in , go through security and board the plane . At this point though I was still pretty confident that I would make it . In Denver I had to stay on the same plane to Fort Lauderdale , the plane landed in late so they made everyone stay on the plane and tried to turn it around as quickly as they possibly could . I was flying on Southwest and they have a unique boarding system . Everyone gets a number and when its your chance you get to board the plane and sit where ever you want . This to me is foreign and strange but so far it has worked out really well . When we landed in Denver I was able to ' pretend ' to disembark and then sit down in the very first seat . I thought this would give me an extra 5 minutes in Fort Lauderdale if I didn 't have to wait for everyone in front of me . ( this worked great by the way . ) However , when a large family boards last and throws a huge fit when they all get separate center seats it can delay the plane 20 minuteat First I just want to say that Nick made it home safely yesterday and it was a miracle how well it worked out . He had quite the adventure , but I 'll let him tell you about that . He is sleeping in this morning , but plans to blog about it today . We were expecting him to get stuck in the DR for a few days or maybe even a week or two , so him getting through is great ! ! Here is a CNN article with current info on Cholera and the violent protests that are going on in Cap Haitien and Port au Prince . Yes it has now spread to the capital . Elections are coming up next week , so it likely won 't stop for a while . This article says that 6 people from Cap have gone to the hospital with gunshot wounds related to the fighting . We have also heard that 4 people have died , but aren 't sure if this is true or not . Another source I read said 35 people with gunshot wounds . Over 1100 Haitians have now died of Cholera , and more than 18 , 000 people have been sick with this bacteria . These are just the cases reported ; the people who are fortunate enough to live near a hospital or clinic and can afford to go . I 'm sure a lot of people who live in more rural places have unknowingly died of this as well . Nick spent time yesterday with people who work in Milot at the hospital and they said that they currently have 80 Cholera patients admitted . So far none of our nannies have gotten it , please continue to pray that they don 't . We have posters all over our compound reminding people to wash their hands and how to prevent it from spreading . They are all terrified of it and doing all they can to keep it at bay . The following is a blogpost from brooke ( http : / / brookejames . blogspot . com ) a girl who works in Port au Prince . A few of my recent post have showed the bad side of Haiti , but I want to make sure that I am also showing all the amazing things that happen here as well . Haiti is an amazing place , and it 's people preserver through many trials . Enjoy these next few uplifting posts ! . . . . or soccer . Yesterday the whole orphanage and many of its staff attended a futbol / soccer game by the Haitian Amputee Soccer Team , which was created after the earthquake . When I heard about it , I began to get all weepy . What hope this must give these people who have suffered so much in the last year . Each team member played without his prosthetic and ran around using crutches . I was inspired and I hope you will be too by just the pictures . " When I lost my limbs in the earthquake I thought my life was over . But God helped me and now that I am playing soccer and working with great coaches , I have much hope for the future . " - Cesar , Goalie . The team has been invited to play in the 2010 Paralympic World Cup in Argentina this October . They need to raise $ 50 , 000 in order to participate . Go to www . iisport . org in order to find out more about it or to donate . After the amputee team played , the older boys at our orphanage played Quisceya Christian school , a school for missionary kids and the bourgeois ( elite , wealthier class ) . All of our kids and staff are excited when the boys or girls have the opportunity to play and have some real competition . Haitians are fantastic soccer players . Our boys won , 5 - 2 ! Our goal at the moment isn 't to escape poverty . It 's to escape misery so we can get back to poverty . Haiti Prime Minister Jean - Max Bellerive The past three days there have been a lot of protests and riots in and around the Cap Haitien and Milot area . It started off with people throwing rocks / bottles and burning tires , but has since escalated . There is a rumor going around Northern Haiti right now that the Cholera bacteria ( which has killed over 1000 Haitians and spread through out the entire country ) was brought in by someone from the UN . People have decided that they no longer want the UN present in this country and are now attacking all UN compounds in the area . At first we assumed that this would all die down after a day or two , but it is still going on . Haiti is no stranger to these activities . When COTP was started 10 years ago these were every day activities . On our recent trip to Minnesota the founder of COTP was telling me stories similar to these . In recent years things have calmed down a lot and this doesn 't happen nearly as often . We have heard that things are getting better , but we have also heard that nothing is changing . Due to these activities the Cap airport and the local Haiti / DR border are currently closed . Nick flies into the DR tonight at midnight ( assuming he makes it since his first flight was delayed ) and was originally going to walk across the border . We now are unsure of when he will be able to cross . I made him promise me that he will not attempt it until we are 100 % positive that he can do so safely . This means that he may spend several days , or maybe even longer in the DR . It 's going to kill me knowing that my husband is only an hour away , but completely unreachable . I just want him back home with us , spending time with our new son ! Children of the Promise is about 3 miles outside of Cap , in the middle of no where . This may not seem far , but with these roads it 's about 45 minutes , if your lucky enough to own a car or moto which most people dont . There has been no violence here and we feel completely safe . We have a decent supply of most things we need and have people who are getting the few things that we are low on . None of us will go in town until everything is back to normal . Please pray that things calm down soon and most importantly pray for the safety of our nannies and their families . We are only having the nannies from Lagossette ( where we live ) and other local villages work for a while so that the Cap nannies don 't have to worry about coming out in the middle of all the fighting . Our nannies , and a lot of Haitians believe that the best way to bring about peace is prayers , therefore they had a worship session that lasted several hours last night after all the babies went to bed . They sang and prayed and it was beautiful . I could hear it as I laid in bed trying to fall asleep . Please join our nannies in pray and help bring this to an end . I have known all my life that I have wanted to adopt , and I have always said that I wanted to do an open adoption ( where the biological parents are still able to have contact with the child ) because I feel that this is in the best interest of a child . In my opinion , it 's beneficial for them to know where they came from and who their parents are . However , this is one of those things that is easy to talk about , but much harder in real life . Yesterday Eventz Mom came to visit for the first time without us asking her to come for paperwork . She lives over an hour away , so she is not able to come often as it is expensive to get here . She spent 4 hours here with him , and I was nervous the entire time . Until our adoption is complete , she can change her mind and take him back at any time , even if he had been living with us for several years . We have not yet told her that we are going to adopt him but I feel that after we do I won 't be so nervous when she comes to visit . We are going to tell her real soon , but want to do it together . Probably with in the next few weeks . I 'm not positive , but I think our nannies may have already told her that Nick and I are going to adopt him because she referred to me as his Mom on 3 different occasions . There could be a lot of reasons for this , including that she knows I am taking care of him , and therefore playing the part of his " mom " for the time being . Our nannies have referred to me as Mom of several of our kids who have stayed with me in the past , so this would not be uncommon . either that or it could be the fact that I peeked out the window at them about every 10 minutes the entire time she was here . This was the first time he has been out of my sight since I have gotten back . While she was here , she told Amy that she wants to take him to her church to get dedicated . I am all for this , but I think I would be more comfortable if we took him and met her there . Plus , I want to be there when my child is dedicated as well ! Before she left , she told me that the next time she comes she wants to talk with me , but not this time cause she knew I had to put Eventz down for his nap . I am unsure of what she wants to talk about . Over all though , I am very glad that she still shows interest in her ( our ) son and that she wants to do what is best for him . No matter what , Eventz will always know that she loves him and that she would literally do anything for him , including the extremely difficult decision of adoption . As long as she is willing , we want her to be apart of his life . On another note , Eventz began to say mom and mama today ! It is super cute . He isn 't saying it in reference to me , just babbling , but I still love it ! ! One of our nannies heard it today and was excited with me ! And then at lunch he was saying dada repetitively and I said " no , mama . " and he looked right at me and said mama ! I have been working all week on getting him to say this , so I defiantly feel successful now ! The other little girl staying with me even tells him " no daddy . Mama " every time she hears him say dada . We can 't wait for Daddy to come home and hear him say this and see how big he has gotten ! Plus he has a special outfit his Daddy bought for him and he is about to outgrow it , so Nick needs to get home soon to see him in it ! Please pray for Nick to have safe travels ! He leaves Portland tomorrow , but will likely have trouble crossing the DR / Haiti border and could have to stay in the DR for several days or maybe even a week or longer . More on this later . Cholera has now spread to North Eastern Haiti , and the last I heard is that there has been nearly 60 confirmed cases of it in our local hospital . Of these , 3 people have died . I don 't know how accurate these numbers are , but this is what I have heard . I do know that it seems to be way worse Limbe , a town about an hour or so from here . One of our staff members took a doctor out there a few days ago to help work in a clinic to treat people . He said that all the clinics and hospitals in that area are over flowing with people . Today there has been some rioting in Cap Haitien due to the outbreak . Before I go any further I just want to say that we are on the outskirts of Cap , in the middle of no where , so we are perfectly fine and won 't see any effects of this . Anyway , there are several rumors going around as to why these riots have started . These are all just rumors , so take them as you like . The first is that the bacteria was brought in by the UN , and therefor many Haitians want the UN to leave the country . The other rumor is that one of the candidate running for president brought it in as a way to help his campaign . Again , these are rumors . One of our nannies was about 2 hours late to work today because people were throwing rocks and bottles in town and she could not get here safely . We have also heard that a lot of people are burning tires . We recently talked to our friends that work at the local hospital , and they are locked inside their compound because there is a lot of rioting there . Elections are in a few days , so people are kind of stirred up about that as well . My travels went great , I couldn 't ask for an easier time switching airports in Port au Prince . I 'll be honest , I was a little worried about this part as last time Nick and I did this people were very pushy , grabbing at our bags , demanding bigger tips , and it was over all hectic ! No one tried to grab my bag , except the guy I asked too , he was fine with his tip , and I got a taxi for a very reasonable price , after a little negotiation that is . It was a lot easier this time now that I can speak Creole and say that I know $ 15 USD to go half a mile is way too much and I 'll only pay $ 2 . 50 . Plus I had Gourdes , so using their money always helps too ! ! It was hard flying in and out of there and seeing tents cities covering all of Port Au Prince . It 's been 10 months , and people are still living in tents . It 's horrible . Rikerns was waiting for me at the Cap airport when I arrived . He was very excited to see me , even though I know that he secretively was hoping Nick was going to be there too even though he was told he was just picking me up . He kept saying that he was glad I was back and that he missed me . " Every day I go to work , I don 't see Nick and Nikki . I miss Nick and Nikki . My Mother ask me if I miss Nick and Nikki and I say yes , I miss Nick and Nikki . I love Nick and Nikki ! ! " He 's a great guy ! ! It 's been raining here a lot and is pretty cold , it stays about 75 all day , so all the nannies have been in winter jackets and pants ! It 's funny to see ! ! A lot of stuff around here is flooded , and the roads seem to be a little worse than when we left ! The nannies were also excited to see me , and shocked that I came back without Nick . They all laughed every time I said that he was still in the States and I came back by myself ! They all said that they were happy with me because I came back ! ! I have learned in these past few days that I just can 't please these women ! As you remember from this post several of the nannies have been harassing us saying that we need to have kids . I told them that Nick and I were adopting Eventz , and they were all excited for us for about 30 seconds , and then started to tell me that now that I have a son , I also need a daughter and that Eventz needs a sister . I told them that he needs a sister and a brother , but not for a while . They wanted to know how long until we would have another child ! Geez , I just had one , now they want me to have another ! ! I let them know that it 'll be a little while yet ! ! It 's so great to be home with Eventz ! He is catching up developmentally really quickly , currently weighing over 12 lbs ! ! He learned to sit up with out using his hands while I was gone and can now do it for several minutes without falling over ! ! When I stand him up , he puts pressure on his legs ! He also now knows how to play with toys which is a big change from when I left as he would just look at them and not know what to do . He was sitting next to me on the couch as I pulled out all the stuff his grandma and great grandma gave him . He would be holding one toy , and the one next too him would start to sign , and he wouldn 't know which one to look at . His eyes were bigger than I have ever seen . He was way over stimulated ! ! It was adorable ! Every time he says DADA , I tell him that I am MAMA , and he just laughs at me ! One of these days he will know who I am ! His hair is getting so long and starting to curl , and the part that was shaved at the hospital to put in an IV has almost grown all the way back ! Late last week Hurricane Tomas passed between Haiti and Cuba . Meteorologists originally thought that it was going to go directly over Haiti , but luckily it shifted west and , although it was still felt in Haiti , it wasn 't nearly as bad as it was originally predicted . COTP is in a valley surrounded by mountains , and so they had rain and wind , but it wasn 't anything destructive at all . I am very thankful that the women I have spent so much time with over the past few months weren 't directly effected by this . However , there were people who were . Click here to read what young children at the Foyer Des Petits De ' munis Orphanage went through during the hurricane . It is unreal to think that these kids had to sit on a roof in the middle of a hurricane because it was the safest place for them to be . I am thankful that we didn 't have to do that with our children . Woops ! ! ! Guess Nick and I looked up my OLD flight itinerary and not the new one ! I had 20 minutes to check in , make it through security , and all the way to my gate , which of course was at the end of the terminal , before my plane left . That 's not 20 minutes before it boarded , it had already almost finished that process . NO , it was 20 minutes until it left , took off , departed . I was standing in line at security and the guy in front of me kept trying to walk through the metal detector with money in his pocket , or wearing his belt and sweatshirt . Then when my bag was going through they paused and looked at it for a while . I kept checking my watch , praying I wouldn 't miss my flight . It felt like it was taking forever . That whole process probably took 10 mins and I was afraid that they would have already closed the door before I got there . There is a slight possibility that I may have cut in front of an old couple who where at least in their 80 's during security . But they were going slow and I was in a hurry ! I didn 't even repack my back pack or put on my sweatshirt after security . I just grabbed all my stuff and started sprinting to my gate . When I got there the lady knew who I was ( the guy from the front counter called and had them hold the plane for me ) and gave me my boarding pass for my next flight and I sprinted onto the plane . I had left my ticket stub with them since I was in such a hurry and as I boarded the plane realized I had no idea what my seat was . I choose a random empty seat , and as I was storing my bag , remembered that Southwest doesn 't have assigned seating so I could seat anywhere , luckily ! Anyways , it all worked out , I made my flight , and didn 't have to spend a bunch of time waiting in the airport or get up ridiculously early ! It all worked out ! ! Now I 'm just hoping that my bag makes it to Florida and doesn 't get lost . I didn 't really give them much time to put it on the plane . And I was in such a hurry that I didn 't even put an address tag or my name on it . I 'm trusting that it 'll be there . It 's full of clothes and Christmas presents for Eventz , so he might be sad if it 's not ! ! Being " home " is a weird feeling . It 's not that I really have culture shock . I have known about and been working abroad off and on since I was 12 . I can easily go from one life to the other and not have a difficult time adjusting . It 's still weird for some reason . Nick and I have grown up here , but we don 't feel like this is home . Each day something happens that reminds me of our children in Haiti . It 's not even the stores , nice roads , or conveniences that we have that make being back here weird , it 's the relationships with people . It 's the way people act and the things they say . It 's the relationships that they take for granite . Going to a child 's birthday party here makes me long for our birthday parties under the mango tree . We were at a party last night and Nicks Mom made the comment that there were so many people there that you could hardly talk to them all . What an awesome problem to have . I wish that our children were surrounded by so many aunts , uncles , grandparents , and friends on their birthday that they didn 't have a chance to talk with them all . Don 't get me wrong , our children are surrounded by nannies and long term staff that love them , but it 's not the same as their family . I watch and listen to my foster sisters to see the drama in their lives and compare it to the youth of Haiti . One of them was watching a show about wedding dresses where the lady paid $ 24 , 000 for her dress . I couldn 't believe that this is what is being portrayed to our youth , it 's dreams that will never happen . Can you imagine how far that money would go in Haiti ? How much formula it could buy ? How many houses it could build ? How many lives it could save ? Why are these things not being portrayed to our youth ? Why are they looking up expensive shoes online , trying to save their money for these things that they " need ? " How come when I talk to my foster sisters , or honestly , anyone stateside , they have no idea what it is like to live in Haiti or any developing country . It 's unfathomable for most . When we told one of the other long term staff in Haiti that we were coming back to the States , she asked if we were excited . Nick and I both paused for about 10 seconds , and then answered at the same time with a NO . It was hard to leave . I hugged and kissed each one of our 40 kids before we left , not knowing if I would see some of them again . Since being gone , some kids have gone home and one even passed away . I will likely never see these children again . New kids have been admitted . Kids are beginning to walk . Children are getting sick and going to the hospital . Some of our nannies are sick . Cholera is still spreading through the country . Haiti is being hit by a hurricane . Nick and I want to be back . We miss it and we want to help and be there when the children meet different milestones . We want to hug them before they return to their families and pray over them when they are sick . My Mom has been watching the news about Hurricane Tomas . I can 't bring myself to watch it and avoid the conversation when it 's brought up . The news only shows Haitians at their worst , kids looking depressed , and families struggling to survive . The news companies are more into it for the story than anything . The way it 's presented makes people pity Haitians . I can 't tell you how many times I have heard " those poor kids , they 've been through so much . " It 's frustrating . Pitying these people won 't do ANYTHING to help them , in fact , it will probably make things worse for them . I wish the news would tell more success stories . I wish they could see how much these children are loved by their parents . How hard working they are . How much they preserver even through the difficult times . How they long to go to school , and how hard parents work to make this a possibility for their children . And most importantly , how deep their love is for Christ . I 've been asked a lot " what is Haiti like ? " How do I answer that . What if I asked you , " what is the US like ? " How can I explain the hug of a child or how excited they get when I walk into the baby house . How can I explain how excited the nannies get when I learn to say a new phrase in Creole or how hard it is when they ask for help and I can 't do anything for them . We have also been asked if we are back to avoid the storm and the outbreak . NO . We wan 't to be there and feel guilty that we are here where it 's safe and that we don 't have to worry about anything . People we love are living in Haiti , fearing that this outbreak or this storm may come to our area and make life even more difficult for them . I can 't imagine what this must feel like . Being back in the States confirms the fact that I am not meant to be here . I have known for a while that I was made to live somewhere else , and now I am positive that that place is Haiti . I 'm ready to go home , to hug and kiss on all the kids at COTP , and be in the place I am meant to be . When Nick and I moved down to Haiti , we knew that more than likely we would end up staying for more than our original year commitment . A few months in , we emailed our director and told her that we were interested in staying at COTP for 2 - 3 years . We had decided that we would wait to tell our parents this until they came down to visit us , because after meeting the kids and staff , as well as seeing how happy we are there , we felt they would better understand what led us to making this decision . Our time in Haiti has continued to be amazing , and we decided that we no longer liked our 2 - 3 year commitment . After a lot of discussion and prayers , we decided that we could see ourselves living in Haiti for 10 , 15 , or possibly more years . We see ourselves raising our kids in Haiti . After we decided that we wanted to stay in Haiti for an extended period of time , we began talking about the possibility of adopting an adorable 8 month old boy ! Nick and I are proud to announce that we are the parents of Eventz Benjamin Alexander Stolberg , our first son ! He is tiny , adorable , and amazing ! We feel very blessed to have him be apart of our family , and to have the privilege to raise him . Last Wednesday we left Haiti some what abruptly and spent 5 days in Minnesota talking to the board and our directors of our desires to stay in Haiti for years to come . ( We both only had shorts and flip flops , and with the weather in the low 30 's , we froze ! Luckily there are Walmart 's there so that we could get some warm clothes ) . We both have a lot of visions of what we would like to do to create a change in Haiti , and how we will live our lives there . After presenting these ideas to the board , we feel confident that God will open and close the right doors for our future . We arrived in Washington today , completely unbeknownst to our parents . After spending some time visiting with them , we informed them of our plans to stay in Haiti and adopt Eventz . I can honestly say , I don 't think that any of them were " that " surprised . I 'm sure that they all knew there was a chance we would stay longer . Adopting Eventz is going to be a difficult and exhausting task to complete . Haitian adoption laws are VERY strict , and Nick and I not only don 't met these requirements , but won 't met them for several years . Realistically it could take us 10 + years to make Eventz legally our son . This means that we will not be able to travel with him , or take him out of Haiti for a long time . There are a lot of uncertainties that go along with adopting him . Adoption laws could change at any moment , and make it impossible for us to finish the process ( we actually can 't even start the process for some time ) . Nick and I aren 't staying in Haiti only to complete our adoption . We also aren 't adopting because we are staying in Haiti . Both of these decisions were talked about separately and are both things that we feel called to do . We have been away from our son for 7 days now , and are very excited to get home to Haiti to spend time with him . I will be leaving on the 9th to go back and Nick leaves on the 18th . We would love to visit as many of our friends and family as possible while here as we aren 't sure when we will be back in Washington , together at least . We feel that until Eventz is comfortable in our home , one of us will always stay in Haiti with him at all times . Since he is so young we are hoping that we will both be able to leave for short vacations within the next year or two ! Please pray that Eventz adjusts well to being a member of our family , and that God will continue to open all the right doors for the 3 of us ! Also please pray for Eventz continued health . He was recently in the hospital and quite sick . He is doing much better now , gaining a lot of weight , and catching up developmentally . Literally , we just woke up one day and it seemed that we were able to communicate much better than we had the day before . I walked away after having a conversation with a nanny one day and said to myself " whoa , I actually understood ALL of that and not just bits and pieces . " We are by no means fluent , and still have a lot to learn each day , but we are able to communicate so much more effectively . One night we needed to talk to the nannies about an upcoming event , and sat in the Zandolit room for probably 15 minutes talking with them about it and laughing a lot . We were able to make jokes and tease each other a bit which was fun . Nick and I even pulled a map out and showed them where our parents live , where other long term staff are from , and where kids have been adopted to . They loved it . Often they will know that a child lives in Maine , but won 't have any idea where Maine is . It was fun to be able to show them these things . Nick has thought that it would be a good idea to tell all the nannies that I don 't like to cook and therefore he does most of it for our family . Half the nannies lectured me about the fact that I need to cook , and the other half thought it was awesome that he does it . One nanny told me that Nick is a great guy because no Haitian men would ever cook . I told them that he is great even on US standards ! ! ! It 's fun to be able to communicate other things than just work related topics . We have been going for walks lately and spending time talking to people outside in the community . We went to Sampson and Michou 's ( yard guy and nanny ) new house and were able to just visit with them . The more we learn the better our relationship is with them ! We both grew up in Washington State and have been married since August of 2008 . Nick has a degree from WSU in Business and Nikki from WWU in Human Services . We are the field directors of an infant care center called Children of the Promise in Cap Haitien , Haiti . We have lived here since June 2010 . We are adopting a little boy named Eventz and are blessed to be his parents ! |
All right . I can 't tell you how much I have loved all of the stories . Seriously . I was in my Curriculum Ideologies class last night laughing HARD with a friend as we read through these again . In the interest of " fair and balanced " , let 's here the stories of the moment when they got you . You know what I mean . The hook . The line . The sinker and she 's reeled in ! It 's only fair that I start out with mine , right ? For the first boyfriend , it was his leather jacket . God , he smelled so good . And he was funny . And maybe a little dangerous . ( OK , OK - I liked bad boys . . . ) The next one , oh , he was a quiet one . He put his time in and his groundwork was amazing . I barely knew that I was being snagged until I was head over heels in love , even though he drove a Camero ( which I called the Disco sled ) . To this day , I think he could make my heart leap were I to see him . And then there is Terrance . Smelled good . . . Hell Yes . Older ? Yep . But the moment ? He had asked me to go to a friend of his wedding for our first " real " date . All right , seems honorable enough . He has to pick me up at 7 in the morning to get to the part of the state where the wedding is being held . I open the door and he is standing there is a Beautiful suit ( with snakeskin shoes ) holding a bag and a Large cup of tea . He says , " It 's really early and I thought you would be hungry , so I brought you a croissant and tea . You look amazing , by the way . " I was a goner . Spill the gushiness . . . In college I started dating this guy who sat behind me in one of my classes . We went to a party in his dorm on our second date . We were talking to his very drunk roomate when the roomate stumbled against me and said " Ummmm the Amazon Goddess smells good . " I pushed him off and was like " What did he say ? " The guy I was with blushed and admitted that he had come home from the first day of class bragging about how he had managed to score a seat behind an Amazon Goddess and they had refered to me that way from time to time . He had been crushing on me for over a month before he asked me out and his buddies had been giving him hell about having a crush on a woman who was way out of his league . I thought that was really sexy and sweet that he thought of me that way . I am tall and curvy and have always been self concious about my size and there he was thinking it was what made me sexy and making no secret about how much he liked me when he could have been playing it cool . He got very lucky that night and for many nights after . On a trip to Florida I had walked in my boyfriends hotel room and found him making out with another girl on the first day of the trip . So a few nights later it is new years eve , we 're all at Epcot Center and I am crying my eyes out . A guy that I had been friends with spent the whole night comforting me , he was so considerate . As the fireworks started he held my hand and said " Don 't go into a new year thinking about an old boyfriend . " My eyes opened up suddenly and I realized the guy I should have been dating had been with me the whole time . I was 18 , single and pretty much loving it when I met him . He wasn 't my type , in fact my complete opposite . He asked me out , I went on what I thought was a " pity date " with him because I didn 't want to be mean . A week later he told me he was " sweet on me " . I thought it was cute , but still I didn 't really have feelings for him . We became pretty good friends and he was always there for me . I was happy to have my " buddy " . Then out of the blue , he stopped talking to me . . . wouldn 't return my phone calls . . nothing ! That 's when I realized I was about to lose the best guy ever . He had me right then because for some reason I never want what 's right in front of me , I want what I think I can 't have . Fortunately for me , I told him how much I missed him and we 're now happily married ! I had just come out of a bad relationship , in fact was still in the process of getting out , and there was this guy that I really admired . He was totally the opposite of the ex I was getting away from . . . He was scrawny , pale , a bit nerdy ( in a cute way ) , totally cared nothing for what people thought of him or popularity and was extremely intelligent . We were friends for a long time , but never spent time alone . Finally I got tired of liking him and him not doing anything about it ( we flirted all the time ) , so I was the one to stop talking to him . 2 months later , on my birthday , he finally said " so you wanna go out ? " . A bit anticlimactic , but I similarly replied - - " sure " . Luckily he got better about being bold . His marriage proposal was great . : ) I knew he was different the afternoon we were just hanging out at my parents house . I was laying on my bed , and he was rubbing my stomach ( which I was self - conscious about , but he loved ) , and he suddenly sat up and said " just think , some day you could be carrying our baby in there ! " . He was 17 , and I was 18 . We 're older now , and have been married for 3 years . after one of our first dates , he walked me out to my car and we had a quick peck on the lips and i made my way into the seat of my car . I watched him walk back to the sidewalk and started my car . Before i knew it , he was knocking on my window . I unlocked the door and he slid in saying , " that wasn 't a kiss , i want a big one " and leaned in for an amazing fireworks inducing hollywood kiss . Still together today : ) I have had some pretty great relationships in the past , great guys , great lovers . However , my man aka SH ( sexy hubby ) is the most incredible lover I have ever had . Our skin becomes hot when we touch even in the night while asleep . Seriously , we cannot sleep with the heat on even in the dead of winter . I have always had a healthy appetite but with him it is a constant 24 / 7 craving even after all these years . We still make out like teenagers and go at it in every room of the house , the car . . . . Additionally he does so many wonderful things to take care of me from bringing me my morning coffee in bed to gifts of beautiful jewelry " just because " . So it isn 't anything he says / said but what he does and WOW he does it damn good ! ! My husband is a good man . He works a full time job , often overtime . He does the grocery shopping , cooking and helps out a lot with the cleaning . He 's always been a hands on dad . He changed just about as many diapers when the kids were babies as I did . He stayed up just about as many nights with them . He truly is a partner to me . Yes , he has faults , as do I , but he really is a keeper . I think that comment I most relate to was the little girl 's cute little red shoes . That 's the kind of thing that made me fall in love with my husband . He was so good with the kids in his extended family . It was clear to me when I first started dating him that he loved children . The little ones would run up to him and throw their arms around him and were always excited to see him . He would take time out to take them to see movies or bring them a little something to brighten their days . Everyone in his family spoke highly of him , and I figured that if everyone loved him , he must be pretty lovable . I was right . ; ) My husband had me when I realized he would do whatever it took for us to be together . While we were dating we lived an hour apart but he would drive down in the middle of the week " just because he missed me " . When I went to college we were 3 hours apart and I saw him every weekend . He sacrificed so much to show me he was commited to us as a couple . I would catch him staring at me and he would say things like " I keep thinking I 'll wake up and you might just be a dream " . We are still smitten with each other 7 years later . He gives me butterflies and fireworks every day . My friend " T " - he had me 13 years ago when I first smelled him . . . and he still smells just as good today . Why didn 't I pick him for " the one . " We were both single at the time and now I 'm getting a " D " and he 's still single . HUMMM . . . BTW - We girls talk about his smell still to this day . YUMMERS . We just hug him so we can smell him . . . My current SO . . . I was in " lust " with him for 10 years , would think about him while I was with other guys . We had one encounter about 4 years into knowing eachother , but he was getting married , and I was moving 1200 miles away . Since then we 've both had 2 sons , and are divorced . I knew he was the " one " then and now he 's grown into an amazing father , I know he 's the " one " now . It was completely obvious when he danced with my 2 year old in his arms at the skating rink , making his day . A few weeks after we found eachother again , he told his ex about us , faced her anger when he told her it was me ( she knew he cheated on her with me way back when ) , and let her know that I would be a part of her children 's lives . After getting to know eachother over the past 8 months , mostly on the phone ( he lives 800 miles away ) , I will be moving in with him , back " home " , March 2007 . . . He says he will wait forever for me if he has to . : ) We met at a mutual friend 's engagement party and were having a nice conversation . He asked me some very direct questions about my hobbies : do you like to ski ? do you like to bicycle ? etc . It dawned on me that he was running down a little mental checklist . It amused me but I kept answering the questions , and finally he said , " Okay , great , would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow ? " Apparently I 'd met enough of his criteria . It was a hilariously methodical way to pick a girlfriend , but typical of his engineer 's mindset . I could see that he was not the type to play games or beat around the bush ! I was worried that it wouldn 't last if I turned out not to be as good at sports as he expected , or something , but in fact he really was just concerned with finding someone who would enjoy sharing in some of the things he loved , and might be able to introduce him to other things he 'd also love . We 've been together eight years and counting . My current BF hooked me when he brought me books as a present on our first date because he knows how much I love to read . But what really hooked me is the fact that he had written a short message on one of the pages in the middle of the book . It was just something short about how he hoped I would enjoy the book as much as he did , but it made me smile . I also love how sometimes he will send me an email or call out of the blue just to say that he 's thinking about me and that he misses me . We do live an hour apart and he 's willing to spend two hours ( literally ) in rush hour traffic in the middle of the week just so we can see each other more and spend time together . He 's a keeper . We had only been dating a month . I came down with the flu and was not able to get in touch with him to cancel our Friday night date . I answered the door and nearly passed out at his feet . He helped me to bed and went to the grocery store to get me crackers and ginger ale . Then he spent the night on my couch . He left Saturday morning but came back that afternoon because he said he " just had a feeling I needed him . " Sure enough 1 : 00am Sunday morning he physically carried me to his car and rushed me to the emergency room where I was given IV fluids and sent home shortly after sunrise . He stayed with me all day Sunday , making sure I got my medicine on time and to see that I was getting enough fluids and keeping them down . He even called in sick to work Monday to make sure I was not going to get dehydrated again . Monday night as he was on his way home he almost made it to the door before saying " Damn . Guess I shoulda got that flu shot back in the Fall . " then he staggered out my front door and vomited in my bushes . I put him in my bed and proceeded to take care if him for three days . Luckily he was not as sick as I was because I don 't think I could have carried him to my car ! 12 years later and we are still taking care of each other " In sickness and in health . " We still laugh that the first time he ever undressed me it was to wash the puke off my pajamas ! We met online ( he was the best wentyfive bucks i EVER SPENT ) and talked for a month in the most fun back and forth conversations - we met and it was like we just picked up where we left off - he was teh sweetest guy , most intelegent guy I 'd ever met - his eyes just sparkled while we talked and i was little smitten - ( okay maybe more than a little ) he got me the next morning when I gave him a glass of OJ and he was so excited that it was not from concentrate - he actually thought it was fresh squeezed . His eyes just sparkled the same way they had when we were talking and I knew he was just as excited about me as he was by fresh oj - which he 'd never had either . We 've been married a little over a year and our daughter just turned two . Oh , this would have to be the ex - boyfriend who baked me a birthday cake . From scratch . And brought it to my house . Did I mention I 'm a Christmas baby ? And this was in high school and he didn 't have a drivers license . So he talked his Mom into driving him over there on Christmas Day . He wasn 't even my boyfriend yet . We dated for a couple years and broke up , and I 'm now happily married , but that is still the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me . Five years ago I was in the breakroom at work early one morning . Three weeks previous to that morning , I 'd left the man I was living with at the university . Unbelievably , I thought he had proposed , and we spent a year together with me convinced we were getting married some day . We had discovered the mistake when I 'd asked him about setting a date . So I was in the breakroom pouring coffee , and coworker came in . Him : You 're here early ! Me : My commute 's shorter now . Him : What happened to the university ? Me : I left . I 'd thought he 'd proposed , but he hadn 't really . Him : Living in a fool 's paradise , hunh ? Me : BAHAHAHA ! My ex had been so serious all the time , so sensitive , and so depressed . . . this guy was not coddling me or poor - thinging me . He was treating me like an adult human being and , yeah , it was a freakin ' stupid situation and he was pointing it out . It was the first time I 'd laughed in three weeks . It felt so good . We 've been married for a little over a month now . He has never sugarcoated things . Sometimes I get tired of his bluntness , but to live in a state of honesty . . . I feel so lucky ! This is long after he " got " me ( I 'm 11 : 32 ) , but my husband still amazes me . Last night , he walked by me and said with all sincerity " You look great tonight . " The kicker ? I was in my baggy t - shirt and pj pants , had just gotten out of the shower ( no makeup or good hair going on ) and was sitting on the toilet doing the deed . I said , " seriously ? Are you kidding me ? " His reply : " No , actually I thought that earlier too , when you were studying , it 's just that I think if I tell you every time that I remember you 're amazing , you 'd probably get annoyed . " Let 's keep in mind that I 'm overweight and by no means what most people would consider hot . And he 's serious with this stuff . He " gets " me more each day . I 'm the one who a while back wrote about being very blessed to have a Frenchman in my life who treats me like gold . He had to pursue me for a year , and for a year I kept telling him to just stay in France and never come back because we 'd never date , I would never marry again , I was bitter , go away , etc . Slowly , he won me over to " reconsider " my plan , and 13 months after we originally met , he came to visit . So , I went to the airport to pick him up . He had flown from France to a connecting flight in the US and then to my place . My parents had the kids , so I was alone , looking up the escalator until he arrived . And then . . . I saw him , in a suit , a dozen red roses in his hands . He had worn a suit ( that couldn 't have been incredibly comfortable ! ) all the way from France just because I once told him how handsome he looked in one . The roses he bought at the connecting city and sat for two hours on the plane with them on his lap so he 'd have them when he arrived . He was one of the last ones from the plane to get to baggage claim too because he wanted to shave ( he had been traveling for a long time to get to me , after all ) , put on cologne , and brush his teeth . All that effort . . . just for me ? ? ? ? Me ? ? ? ? I melted . As we waited for his luggage , I crawled into his lap and twined my arms around his neck , resting my nose against his skin and just breathing in the delicious scent of a man I knew would then forever be in my life , no matter how much it scared me to care this much about another man again ! I was in a crappy mood , and taking it out on him . . . telling him that I hated his car because it was uncomfortable , that the fleece seat covers were stuffy , and I don 't know what else . I had to go upstairs to grab something , and when I came back the seat cover on my seat was gone , and it hasn 't been back since . I smile every time I notice . He could have just gotten annoyed right back at me for taking my bad mood out on him , but he tries to be better than that , and that makes me want to be better than that , and we have a much better relationship because of it . And I no longer have to deal with the annoying stuffy seat cover that 's always trying to slip off underneath me , so maybe I 'll keep him around . When I was a teenager I had a girlfriend that guys just loved . I couldn 't take any guy I was dating anywhere near her . I would be on dates and run into her and spend the rest of the evening fielding questions about her . Not her fault that she 's a hottie and I dated a few jerks . Anyway , I 'm engaged to my husband and it 's finally time for him to meet my friend . We meet and afterwards I say to him : Don 't you think she 's pretty ? His answer ? No . She 's got bad skin and no boobs . I met a very debonair ( married ) man when I started my first " real " job . He was so kind and gentle from the beginning . He would speak so highly of his wife , mom , sisters . I had the BIGGEST crush on him for the LONGEST time . One day over lunch we discussed the possibility of a relationship on the side as I was in a relationship as well . It worked for two years we had a very strong relationship , to this day we talk and still have that special spark . We are both married and still travel the huge distances between us to embrace each other on our own special occasions . We love each other on a strange fairy tale level and for us this is perfect . If there is one thing I know from being married - I can 't know anyone else 's reality . Sometimes we marry people who . . . well , aren 't our perfect matches . We make do , we stay . Her fairy tale doesn 't have to follow the same script as yours . Just as mine doesn 't ( and isn 't ) - but I can be glad that they have found a way to manage to keep their connection . 7 : 34 's " Fairy Tale " is built on deception and lies . Anyone who sees any beauty in that is seriously disturbed . She liked the fact that he spoke so highly of his wife . Those were nothing but empty words if he had so little respect for her that he screwd around on her . Yep , he 's a winner allright . Newsflash . Good people make mistakes , but they recignize them and learn from them and don 't repeat them on purpose and they certianly don 't continue them for years and go to great lengths to continue them . Dawn , first of all - thanks for the lovely thread today , and the great idea which generated so many laughs yesterday ! Wonderful . To the lady posting of her fairy tale with the married man - did you get the reaction you were expecting from wives and significant others ? One has to conclude that a ) you were jealous and trying to stir up the waters , or b ) looking to ruin the happy mood , for whatever reason . . . . To the rest of us ? Let 's ignore that . And more than anything ? Thank God for the beautiful stories and anecdotes that we can treasure and know that we are really and truly loved ~ and this love is shown in person , in public , proudly and without shame , lies , or sneakiness . ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ My husband had me on our second date when he said in all sincerity , " would you be offended if I asked if I could kiss you ? " A gentlemen and a truly beautiful soul , I 've loved him ever since . And yes , I am blessed . I try to never lose sight of that . I usually prefer to tell nasty stories about my ex - husband , and God knows there are plenty . But , here 's a nice one . I went on a shopping trip with a friend of mine , and left my wallet in a phone booth , with all my cash in it , about $ 300 . This was nearly 15 years ago , and I was making crap money and had no credit cards , so it was a lot of money for me . The wallet of course was gone when I realized what I had done . I was devastated . My ex wired me $ 330 so I could go on my trip . The extra $ 30 was so I could buy a new wallet . Of course , he was able to do that because I was the one paying all the bills while he arsed around . He 's an arsehole , and now I see he always was , but he had his good moments , too . That was one of them . " Wendee . . . " It 's not surprising your Prince Charming 's marriage didn 't last since he screwed around with you before he was even married . Now you think it 's romantic that he " faced his ex 's anger " over him bringing her children around the woman he once cheated on her with ? Are you kidding ? My husband and I went on our first date . After dinner he went to open the car door for me . He pushed me up against the car and kissed me . Then he laid his hands on my size 12 waist that I was so ashamed of and thought was fat and blubbery and he said " You have the most incredible body . " Re : the " fairy tale , " no , I don 't think she was intent on stirring anything up , or ruining the happy mood . I think she thought there would be space to share a story that few people would understand . She may not have expected the reaction she got , but she probably should have , if she has read other comments on other posts . People appear to personalize others ' situations an awful lot on these comments , and the vitriol is pretty awful at times . Support where you feel inclined to support , but I will never understand the vulture - like rending of women that goes on here sometimes . Maybe people feel the need to exorcise their personal frsutrations safely on complete strangers ? Paint their judgments all over someone else ? It reminds me an awful lot of an anti - choice friend I had who changed her mind when she caught pregnant . We don 't know what 's going on in that woman 's life . If she told you her spouse was mean or thoughtless , the comments might change in tone . Humanity , you are so fickle . . . . People live differently . Some choices can be very hard . Relationships can be compromising . There are lots of ways to love . Nuclear families aren 't for everyone , either , no matter how difficult that may be for some folks to believe . Go ahead and cast your stones , folks . Much good may it do you . I have to agree with 10 : 07 . I have been cheated on it would have made me sick to the very depths of my soul to think that the woman who broke up my marriage was going to be a part of my children 's lives . I thank God that relationship did not last . I know a lot of women are not that lucky and my heart goes out to them . Please try to have a little sensitivity toward your lover 's ex - wife . Your joy is built on her pain and the pain of her children as well . Nope , not romantic at all . I can also find it in my heart to tell a nice story about my evil ex - husband . We met in college and were friends for about a year before we started dating . A few months before our first date we were both taking Summer school courses . The first session of Summer school I think I was taking a computer class for my first class of the day . We both would hang out in the student center after our first class . He always walked in a couple of minutes after I got there and we would have a cup of coffee together . Second session I was getting one of my required PE classes out of the way and taking a fittness walking class . . . in July . . . In North Carolina . I would stagger into the student center after that class and all I wanted was ice water or Gatorade or Diet Coke and there he stood adorable as Hell , waiting for me , holding the steaming hot cup of coffee he had just bought me . It is a wonder he didn 't give me a heat stroke . He was just too cute for me to break his heart ( if I had known then what I know now ) so I drank the coffee until he finally asked me what my first class was . After that it was Diet Coke every day . I was on the couch trying to get some work finished up while he was sleeping when , all of a sudden , I began to cry . Okay , I admit it , I was sobbing ! I finally gave up and went and crawled back in bed with him and snuggled up close to him . Barely awake , he turned over , wrapped his arms around me , and said , ' It 'll be okay honey , the south will rise again . ' I couldn 't do anything but laugh after that ! As a matter of fact , he had me laughing through my tears again today at our wedding ! We started dating when I was 19 and I had just moved back home . I hadn 't even told my parents about him yet since had only been a couple months . On the way to school one day , I had a terrible car accident and totaled my car . I was okay , but I spent a few at home in bed . Apparently , he had called my house but I was sleeping . He told my mom he just wanted to stop by and drop off a couple things . When I woke up my room was filled with balloons and flowers . In a small bag was a teddy bear and matchbox car . The card read , " I 'm so glad you 're okay . Here 's this since I can 't be your teddy bear . Oh , and I thought you 'd need some new wheels too . " Needless to say , I was hooked . Men are such amazing creatures , aren 't they ? For me , it was the first time he kissed me on the forehead . Just a little insignificant kiss but it said so much to me . . . . . . I believe a lot in destiny . I have dreams sometimes that ' foretell ' what will happen next . I ' knew ' that the year I turned 23 would be the year I would get married and that the man I kissed on New Year 's Eve would be the one . The guy I was currently dating was not one I would normally date . He wasn 't the ' bad boy ' preppy thing - he was a geek with great blue eyes . He was set to work the midnight shift and wouldn 't be there until 1 a . m . On my way to the party , I decided to set my watch back an hour so that things would be just right . Turns out I didn 't need to . . . he took a big risk and called in sick just to be with me that night . He didn 't want any other guy to get his hands on me and get that New Year 's Eve ( and first ) Kiss . We brought the New Year in with a kiss - less than 2 months later we were engaged . Married in August of the same year . We are now working on our 5th year together and I am carrying our second child . I couldn 't be more blessed ( even if he is a stubborn a $ $ sometimes ! ) . About ten years ago when I was in college , a friend got me interested in a music / movie based Internet chatroom . I started talking to several people there , one of whom was another university student 13 hours away in Canada ( I was in Virginia ) . We became good friends , chatted often , eventually exchanged letters and phone calls . He was a dj at his campus radio station , and dedicated a show to me on my birthday ( which I now have on tape ) . He also sent me the best , most thoughtful present I have ever gotten , which was a carefully selected package full of the things I had told him I liked . It arrived precisely on my birthday . I was blown away . Nine months later , during a conversation online , he asked me if I 'd like to meet in person . I answered yes , and had to leave for class . When I returned that night , he had rented a car and made arrangements to drive down the next weekend . I could not believe that he cared enough to make such quick and determined plans . The next Saturday night , the car pulled up and a handsome man got out . As he stood at my door in the pouring rain , looking nervous and drenched , I knew he had me . Eight years of marriage and two children later , he still does . I married too young , and got divorced ( he 's a good man , and still a friend - - we were too young and " in love with being in love " ) . Years passed . I had a penpal who 'd progressed , over the course of almost eight years , from e - mail to chat to phone conversations . One day , he informed me he was coming to meet me . I begged him NOT to come , afraid our meeting would change things , and ruin a friendship I 'd come to count on . He came anyway . Things were great and our relationship flourished , but I was very clear that I was NOT ready to think about getting married again . I had a great job , my own home , was researching adopting as a single parent . I told him he was NOT to get me an engagement ring or propose to me - - the answer would be " no . " I went cross country to visit him about a year after we started seeing one another face to face ( he came to visit me every month for a year ) . He had beautiful , romantic surprises for my birthday . Then more romantic surprises for Valentine 's Day , also that week . Then we went to visit a cheesy tourist trap that happened to have a beautiful church I wanted to see . That night , under an amazing blanket of stars , on the steps of that church , he got on one knee . I trembled , tears threatening , steeling myself to say no . He said " My soul has been crying out for yours since the day I was born . I 've wandered the wilderness , knowing you were out there somewhere . Now that I 've found you , I can 't let go . Please , say you 'll marry me . " I said yes . We 'll celebrate our second anniversary in January . I sold my house , told my clients I was going freelance , left it all behind to follow my Sailor . He 's goofy and silly , and a big geek . He helps protect our country . And he 's my soulmate . Oh , these are great ! I was a councilor at a summer camp for the arts right after I graduated college . The first day there I saw this beautiful man with long flowy hair and a cute beard . He was the pinnacle of " my type . " I fell in love with him at first sight and married him three years later . For the record , he did not have love at first sight and we didn 't even date that first year . But when we ran into each other two years later at the same camp , we connected right away and have been together ever since . He no longer has much hair at all , but I would trade that in for all the other amazing things he does for me . Best of all , he is wonderful with children and is a truly awesome dad . * swoon * I was finally giving in to a guy that had pursued me for a long time . While we were making out my shirt hiked up a little . Rather than take advantage or rush through , he pulled it back down . He was worried I might get cold . One night in college my roommates and I were throwing a party and a guy I 'd been friends with forever sat down with me on this little arm chair we had . It 's a little chair but we 're both real skinny so we fit . He put his arm around me ( he still says just because it helped us fit better on the chair ) and I swear I had never felt anything so amazing in my life . At that moment everything just clicked and I knew he was special . He says he felt the same thing . That was a while ago but I still have that feeling every time he puts his arm around me and lucky for me he will be my husband in just 57 days ! 5 : 04 , the forehead kiss signifies the move from lust in his groin to love and caring in his heart to me . I love the forehead kiss , too . When I was in college , I was at a party with a friend of mine . A guy I barely knew was there and flirting with me , but I kept ignoring him because I was minding my friend who got really drunk and , consequently , really sick shortly thereafter . She was outside throwing up and shaking because she was cold , but she was too sick to walk back inside , so I took my shirt off ( I was wearing a camisol under it ) and wrapped her up in it . The flirtatious guy followed me outside and when he saw us , he came over and took his OWN shirt off and gave it to my friend ( who he didn 't know at all ) so that I didn 't have to stand in the cold with no shirt . The fact that he literally gave me the shirt off his back impressed me , but what really won me over was that he stayed outside with the me the rest of the night and helped me take care of my friend . We dated for 2 years after that . i never used text messaging until i met him . not long after we started seeing each other , i text messaged him " is it weird that i miss you already ? " ( i had just left his house . ) he responded with " if its weird . " i spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out what the hell that meant , until i realized i had to scroll down for the rest of the message . what he said was " if its weird than i 'm much weirder than you . " we 've now been married almost a year . and we send many text messages . i 'm better at it now . My fiance ( M ) and I haven 't always had the perfect relationship , nor the best timing . He first asked me out three days after I got with my ex , and I 'll confess , I did cheat on my ex with him * once * . That was because my ( now ) fiance told me he loved me , and that he wanted me to be his first . I couldn 't say no . Years passed , we drifted apart , I thought I 'd ruined our friendship , my ex got more and more abusive sexually and eventually we split . My 22nd birthday came around and I invited M out for it . He agreed , but only for an hour or so because of his illness ( he has a muscular problem that leaves him in severe pain , and he has to take over 20 tablets for it a day ) . He met me in the pub . My sister 's boyfriend turned up , along with his best friend . My ex . I was horrified , he was the last person I wanted to see , especially as I was well on my way to a good old drunk . I told M this , and he spoke to my sister and her partner to see if they could get rid of him . They couldn 't - the bastard even came home with us and tried to follow me upstairs when I went to get changed ! We went back out for the evening to the bar I used to work in . Needless to say I was being fed drinks left right and centre so I ended up having to run to the loo every ten minutes or so to pee ! One time my ex is being really " cosy " despite me being sat between a sofa arm and M , and so I 'm dashing off to get some space . I come back , and the ex has vanished , and M is looking rather proud of himself . I perked up immediately and had a rocking night . We get back to my house , and I 'm not exactly able to walk in a straight line . M simply tells me to lean on him , and I ask him rather drunkenly how in hell he 'd managed to scare my ex off . He just grins and tells me he 'll let me know when I 'm sober . M carries me upstairs , sets me down on the bed and goes to leave . I ask him where in hell he thinks he 's going . I won 't go into too much detail , but GOD he was amazing . But the moment when I truely knew I loved him ? The next morning , when he apologises to my parents for the11 : 06 PM My father set me up on a blind - date . We met a sports bar ; and yes it was just as absolutely awful as you could image . He was such a dork and after an hour he was totally drunk . My blind - date and I were playing pool next to this really handsome guy and his friends . I started to talk to him and we just instantly clicked it was like we had know each other for years . He asked me if I was with my boyfriend and I shyly explained no unfortunately I was on a blind - date set up by my father . Ugh ! I figured he would go running for the hills but instead he asked me if I wanted to ditch my date and go out for coffee with him . I explained that my blind - date was a friend of the family and I really couldn 't just ditch him . . . . So what did my " prince charming " do ; he took me and my drunk blind - date out for coffee . My date ended up passing out and we sat talking for hours over coffee . I knew that very night he was the man I was meant to be with for the rest of my life . The next day my father asked how the date went and I said the guy was a joke , but I was so glad he set me up with him because if I hadn 't been on that date I wouldn 't have met the man I was going to marry . Yes , after only a couple of hours together I already told my father I had met the guy I was going to marry . A year later we were married . I had liked this guy for a really long time , but unfortunately , it seemed that we were just going to be good friends . One day we went for a long walk through a really cute cozy area . There was a big beautiful church in front of us and we both sort of stopped to take it in . I sort of brushed my hand against his accidentally and took my hand in his . I looked at him and we both leaned in for the most amazing kiss ever . Right as we did , the church bells went off . It was wonderful . We dated for about a year after that , but that kiss will always be special . I took my casual date over to a friend 's house and he dropped to his knees to help her 5 year old build a house out of Lincoln Logs . I was a goner . Married 14 years , two beautiful children . 8 . 04 : He sat there and smiled . That 's all . My sister , father and friend have all verified that fact . M can be scary when he 's playing nice . Also helps he grew his nails for a bet so they look like talons : ) When I was 16 my family and I went away w / my mother 's best friend and her family to Vermont for a week around New Year 's . It just so happened that her new stepson ( C ) was going to be joining us . He was 22 , handsome , funny and I had the most enormous crush on him . We were good friends , but because of the age difference I never imagined that he would look at me that way . C and I spent the whole vacation skiing together , staying up late talking and spending pretty much every minute together , but I just figured that he just had no one else to hang out w / ( I was the closest in age to him ) New Year 's Eve everyone went out to dinner and then watched fireworks at the local ski resort . After everyone had returned to the cabin and gone to bed , C and I stayed up talking as usual . All the lights were out and we were sitting close and whispering so as not wake everyone . All of the sudden C leaned in close and whispered , " Please don 't be mad , just promise you won 't be mad " I had no idea what he was talking about and told I wasn 't mad . " Just promise you won 't get mad " Then he leaned in and kissed me . It caught me completly off guard and completly took my breath away . It took another 5 years for us to work things out , but we just had out 2 year anniversary and I couldn 't be happier Most recently , there was the long time friend who would bring me coffee whenever he was off of work and I wasn 't . It was just so sweet of him coming down to the office for five minutes just to make my day easier . This is the same guy who sent a dozen long stem roses . . . just because . I fell fast and hard . I guess it just didn 't work out though . And the first boyfriend I ever had . I doubt I 'll ever forget . He gave me a promise ring the summer before I went away to college and told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me . Later that year , when he was leaving from spending the weekend at the dorm with me , he stopped his car in the middle of the parking lot , runs back to the dorm and asked me to marry him . I was 16 and dumb , but boy was I in love . My wife . . The most wonderful human being on earth . . We met a work , I was in an extremely abusive relationship with two kids . . . She had no intentions of having kids a family or any of that , one evening when she wasn 't felling so well as we were leaving work I kissed her , her reaction " I think I am going to puke " most would think that 's not very romantic but every day after that she would stay late with me and I days that I worked but she didn 't she would be there for lunch . She helped me out of the horrible situation I was in and I can not thank her enough for that . We have been together for 4 years now and couldn 't possibly be any happier my best friend helped ( donated his sperm , we are both woman so neither of us have that ) us to havea third child and are a happy , healthy fun loving family . I love her with all of my heart and could not have asked for a better person to spend my life with . = 0 ) Seven years ago , I was just coming out of a long term relationship and wasn 't really looking for anything serious . I had always told myself that I would never get married . In my life , I had seen too many relationships sour and dissolve in these hate filled divorces , and decided that it was not for me . Then , I went on a blind date . Toward the middle of the evening , we were at a gas station , and the clerk asked " How are you two tonight ? " and J responded " We are great ! Tonight is our 5th anniversary ! " I laughed and though it was cute . That date was July 23 , 1999 . He proposed October 1 , 1999 . We were married on April 29 , 2000 . I love him more today than I ever have . He is my best friend and my soulmate . * Jen * We met on the internet . I met him at his house which was stupid , but I trusted him . We talked and talked and were listening to Judas Priest of all things . I was laying on the floor and he came over and laid next to me and kissed me at that moment . That was it . I 've tried to leave him a few times . . . but I can 't . I think of that moment and still get the quivvers . |
I 'm twelve . Feels like I 've been twelve forever . Time has been standing still this whole , hot steamy summer . There 's been plenty of chances to sit here on my steps and watch the cars whizz by . Oh , but the motorcycles . They are wonderful . Most people today ride without helmets . Hair flying about . Tee - shirts . Shorts . So cool . So absolutely dangerously cool . I 'm so happy lately , living in a fine house with a wonderful mom , belly full , shoes on my feet . Plenty of shoes . Pretty shoes . Lots of dresses and dollies and teddy bears . My room is so nice and warm and purple . I think I even have six pillows . There 's nothing I love better than to climb up on my bed and bury myself in my blankets and dream of days when the neighborhood was a nicer place . But today , right now , I am sitting on my stoop watching Mrs . Pauley argue with a man in a black suit holding a piece of paper . I remember playing hopscotch with Mrs . Pauley 's kids , racing bikes around the block , selling lemonade at our corner stand , and lazily brushing the dog on her front porch . Lilly , her middle daughter , was my best friend . I had her over to my house for a sleepover at least half - a - dozen times . Lilly kind of liked Tom , Ernie Conrad 's son . Ernie Conrad ran the neighborhood barber shop . My brother Steve was good friends with Tom . They spent many hot summer days in the air - conditioned shop reading Archie comics and sucking on Tootsie Roll Pops . The shop had mirrors on both walls , and the boys would stand and look at themselves in the never - ending reflections . Tiny copies of themselves over and over without end . But poor Mrs . Pauley . She is right in the middle of trying to live her life . Raising a family of six . Happily married . Always smiling . Buying Girl Scout cookies . Feeding the birds . Serving as a Block Parent . A regular at PTA . Taking us to the community swimming pool , and even braving the cold in December to take us ice skating . A mom 's mom . A real nice lady . So it was very sad when her husband passed away . He had a great job at the railroad . My dad said Mr . Pauley made a lot of money . Things were fine at first , then the trouble started . The two - car family soon became a one - car family . My friend Lilly started going hungry . She ate at our house a lot . She told me her brothers and her sister were living with Mrs . Pauley 's parents . Notices started being posted on the front door . The porch wasn 't swept . Someone stole the wicker chairs . The windows remained filthy . I didn 't see Lilly as much . In fact , she missed a lot of school . Which brings me to the afternoon I was sitting on the front steps of my porch . It was hot out . No air was moving . Mrs . Pauley was standing in the doorway , looking rather upset . There was a policeman and a county sheriff standing on either side . A man with a briefcase and handful of papers was arguing with Mrs . Pauley . She was starting to cry . I could tell the county sheriff was being sympathetic . Mrs . Pauley pleaded one last time , asking " Isn 't there something I can do ? " The official - looking man in the dark suit shook his head no and reached out to post a paper on the door . I could see what it said from across the street . NOTICE TO VACATE . I looked up and down the street . Trash littered the gutters . A car sat in front of Mr . Baker 's house with four flat tires . There was an empty lot where Ernie Conrad 's barber shop used to be . Most of the front porches were piled up with old furniture , busted exercise equipment and beat - up bicycles . There were broken mini blinds in the windows , and many had no curtains . I have been a bundle of fears since I was a kid . I was convinced for a long time that there were monsters under my bed waiting to grab me by the foot when I got up to get a drink of water . My daddy gave me a flashlight one time on my birthday , but of course the batteries were always dead . I think I kept leaving it on all night under my covers . I just couldn 't handle all the creaking under my bed and the hollowing out my window . We had a lot of trees around our property , and on really windy nights long talons would dance around , reaching for me , trying to take me away . It was really rough growing up . I was fat and not very good at sports . I usually ducked at a baseball pitch . I cringed whenever I played dodge ball . I couldn 't get the volleyball over the net . Badminton was just plain stupid . I was always last at track . And I never even considered trying out for football . I didn 't have a lot of friends in school . Yeah , a few , but they were like me , and we just ended up getting bullied together . It was a very painful way to go through school . One of my friends , Ronnie Benner , must have had enough . I don 't know the whole story , but one day he went up to the top of the Shikellamy Lookout over the Susquehanna River and jumped . I managed to remain alive . I avoided most of the bullies . My plate quickly filled up with extra activities such as stringer photographer for high school sports , local radio station announcements , the yearbook staff , and a local history project . I used to hang out in the soundproof booth in the library and record DJ shows and radio plays . I was able to hide in away high school . Tucked away from all my enemies , whether they be fellow students , thugs who dropped out , or family . The worst thing that happened to me one day after school was being chased down by three bullies , one of which was Ron Mull . Ron 's sister , Lynn , was running with them at the time . The guys held me while Lynn beat the shit out of me . It was so humiliating for two reasons : first , a girl was beating me up , and , two , I had a crush on Lynn . It didn 't take me long to discover marijuana and alcohol . I started hanging out with a whole new breed of friend . Ones who didn 't pick on me or chase me down the street threatening to kill me . These friends were handing me beers and joints and wanted to sit around and talk . We complained about bullies , and girls , and parents , and cops , and teachers , and having to work . We were convinced everyone was crooked and no one cared about the average kid on the street . We concluded it was our job to fight back . We took what we wanted . We skipped school . We threw rocks through the windows of abandoned warehouses and hunks of ice and snow at passing cars . We stood on railroad overpasses and pissed on vehicles going by . We were showing the world what 's what . My alcohol consumption and pot use grew out of control . I knew I was using more than those around me . I just couldn 't get through a day without it . I took a hit when I got out of bed . I had bottles of Miller High Life stashed under rocks in cool running streams . Then there was grain alcohol and Vodka picked up for me by Russ , my " of age " best friend . He and I drank and smoked pot day and night . I think at one point my reality and my drugged fantasy got turned around , and I wasn 't sure what was real . It got so bad that I committed a series of felonies while high and got caught . Through a plea bargain , I was able to serve three years in a state prison , then seven years on state parole . Unfortunately , my drug and alcohol use continued to be a problem . I was an addict and an alcoholic with no idea what to do about it . Days ran together . Weeks became months , and months became years . Nothing changed . I 'll quit tomorrow ! But tomorrow never came . I lost cars and apartments and two wives . My youngest son stopped talking to me , despite having a baby . I 'm a grandpa . I have yet to hold him . Little Skyler . The good thing is I came to realize all of these consequences and situations were my own doing . After a three - week stay at a drug and alcohol rehab , I signed on to the the idea that I am , all the way down to my toes , an alcoholic and a drug addict . I have accepted this as a fact in my life . And I have come to rely on Jesus Christ as my higher power . I have died with Him in His crucifixion , and I have been risen with Him to live again as a new creation . My biggest fear is that I will one day return to the frame of mind where I feel justified to imbibe . To grab a joint and " relax . " You know , just one . A chance to let go and chill out . I just know where I 've been , and I fully understand alcoholism and drug addiction . There is no safe situation in which I can use drugs or get drunk . I can only counter this fear by staying plugged in to the true definition of addiction , to remember what it has cost me in my life , and to realize that the only outcome to a lifetime of drug and alcohol addiction is death . And that is my biggest fear . This is in response to the Writing 101 blog prompt assignment number fourteen . I picked up the closest book , turned to page 29 , and noticed a phrase jumping off the page . " Death by Stampede . " It made me think of recent Hajj events in Mecca where pilgrims are trampled to death by stampeding believers . The following is a letter from a girl to her brother about what happened at the latest Hajj . ( This is a fictional account . ) It 's morning on the first day . Things are really amazing at Hajj . I 've never seen this many people . There has to be a million pilgrims here . Maybe more . Today we go to Mina for the stoning of the jamra with pebbles . I was wondering what the significance was . Someone told me it 's actually the stoning of the devil . They told me after the stoning everyone must shave their heads . I 'm thinking I 'll look kind of silly , but I 'm honored to be here and to participate . If I can crush al nafs al ' amāra during the stoning of Jamrat al ʿAqaba , then I will have taken the next step in attaining closeness to Allah . I 've heard that the stoning of the devil ritual is considered the most dangerous part of the Hajj . Crowd conditions are especially difficult on the final day when people leave the valley of Mina and head back to Mecca . People often get crushed in the crowds . Wish me luck . I 'll finish this letter when I get back from Mina . Hi , I 'm back from Mina . It was so horrible . I really enjoyed the ritual of the stoning of the devil , and everything was going well . I noticed a lot of people camping out until noon . I asked why we were waiting to throw the pebbles . One old man said according to haddith the Prophet Mohammed 's last stoning was performed just after noon prayer . He said scholars feel that the ritual can be done at any time between noon and sunset on this day , but many Muslims are taught that it should be done immediately after the noon prayer . So there were many pilgrims camped out until noon , and then they rushed out to do the stoning . I was so scared , being pushed along . I was almost being carried rather than walking . I tried to get out of the crowd , thinking it was too dangerous to go . But I couldn 't break free . It was so hot and there were thousands of people . We were almost there when the crowd suddenly started to stumble and break apart . People were screaming . One woman was kneeling down in front of me , holding a child . I saw a lot of blood coming from the child 's head and nose . I think her arm was broken . People tried to steer clear of the woman and child , but they kept on going . No one stopped to help . I know you told me that there have been many such incidents in the past . Some of them very serious . One of the elders later in the evening told about the time when 244 worshipers were trampled to death . Hundreds more were hurt . Several pilgrims fell off a foot bridge , and others tried to escape the push of the oncoming crowd . He said 340 pilgrims died in a fire at the overcrowded Mina tent camp in 1997 . I just don 't understand why something tragic happens when people are taking the time to travel to the holy city and pay their respects . Why would Allah allow all those people to die ? Isn 't there any other way to do this without people getting crushed to death ? One senior temple official said all safety measures were in place at the site . He said sometimes " caution isn 't stronger than fate . " If that doesn 't sound like " It was Allah 's will " I don 't know what does . I don 't plan on taking this pilgrimage again in my life . The Muses were 9 goddesses from Greek mythology who guided the hands and gave divine inspiration to artists , writers , and poets . In colloquial terms , a muse can be a living person who inspires an artist and creates a desire for an artist to create . A muse is a guiding spirit , a source of inspiration of an artist , or a poet . It comes from the Latin musa . If a person says that a person is their " muse " they are calling them their source of inspiration . I think creativity is essential for a balanced , full life . It is enjoyable , exhilarating , and fun . It needs to be honored and nurtured on a regular basis . Without constant vigilance , it can be easily ignored , impaired or impeded . But there are no exercises , books , or techniques in the world that will help you or your work unless you honestly examine what makes you tick . So , take a moment , sit down and think about your life . Remember , muses are not always attractive , socially acceptable , moral , or lovable . But muses are essential to the practicing artist . " … as immediately I stopped disciplining the muse , " said F . Scott Fitzgerald , " she trotted obediently around and became and erratic mistress if not a steady wife . " Most writers either over - discipline their muse or ignore him or her . Well here 's the key to solving your discipline problem . You need to realize you don 't have a discipline problem . You have a relational problem . You can either be a good lover or a failed one , a committed wooer or someone who makes lots of promises but doesn 't deliver . Don 't focus so much on creating a finished product . Enjoy the creative process . Realize that her main job , like infants , is to create messes . Therefore , give her space to make big ones . You can clean them up later . Avoid distraction while you 're spending time with her . No email and no Facebook , please . If your writing project turns out well , say , " Oh well , I can 't take all the credit . The muse , you know . " If it turns out poorly , say , " Oh well , I can 't take all the blame . The muse , you know . " If she says something , write it down , even if you 're in the shower . If she said something in the shower and you didn 't take notes , don 't blame her if she doesn 't show up to " work " on time , later . Your muse is great , but just because she gives you a great idea for a new novel , it doesn 't mean you should quit the one you 're working on to go write that one instead . I have been writing for most of my life . My practice has yielded poems , essays , journal entries and a few short stories . I became an accomplished technical and legal writer through my career as a paralegal . I have also written a lot about spirituality . Unfortunately , I have never been published . I am not always confident when I write . When it comes to creative works , I often fail to finish the project . I have fifty - seven pages of a screenplay which is stuck somewhere in the middle of the second act . I am struggling with a short story based on an event from my teenage years . Hopefully , I will finish it and do the necessary rewrites in time to submit it to this year 's Writer 's Digest writing competition , which has a deadline of May 4th . I came to realize that something was wrong in my creative life . It seemed I 'd lost touch with my muse . I would often sit and stare at a blank document on my laptop , unable to think of a single thing to write about . I would wake up from a wild dream , ready to put fantasy into words . The dream was complicated and wonderful and aroused a plethora of emotions . So why couldn 't I write ? Why wouldn 't the words come ? This did not make sense . It was as if something was blocking me . Something was standing in the way . This continued for quite some time . It became very frustrating . I had this terrible feeling that time was slipping away . That maybe I was not a writer after all . When I could see no hope , I headed to the local book store . I discovered a fantastic book on creative recovery by Julia Cameron called The Artist 's Way . Cameron talks about overcoming creative blocks and maintaining a state of flow through the practice of journaling and seeking God . She indicates that God is the Great Artist , and that all creativity comes from Him . She says we need to get in touch with our inner artist , and open up the channels of communication between us and God . She maintains throughout her book that creative inspiration is from and of a divine origin and influence , and that artists seeking to enable their creativity need to understand and believe in this concept . She writes , " God is an artist . So are we . And we can cooperate with each other . Our creative dreams and longings do come from a divine source , not from the human ego . " She says we are often blocked creatively by our internal editor . That harsh , judgmental , limiting , defeating voice that tells us we 'll never amount to anything . That we have nothing good to say . Many times , our internal editor is based on someone who has put us down in real life . I followed Cameron 's instructs in the book and started writing what she calls " daily pages . " The exercise involves writing four pages every morning upon awakening . No subject . No hesitation . No spell checking or editing . Just writing down whatever comes to mind . This is supposed to get you into the practice of writing . Cameron says if we write immediately upon waking up , we tend to beat the internal editor to the punch . ( I guess he has a habit of sleeping in . ) I figured if I could get around the harsh criticism of my internal editor , I could reestablish the connection between me and my muse . What I didn 't realize is that , at least for me , my muse was God . Cameron 's theory of God as the Great Artist struck me as being right on target . I have an inner artist that connects with God and is inspired to write . It is as if I am merely a conduit between myself and my muse . For the longest time , I could not figure out what went wrong . I had written some fairly decent poems over the years . This was especially true when I was emotionally lost , hurt , or crushed . The words were cathartic , and they would often just come pouring out . Now , admittedly , I think my alcoholism and drug addiction caused me to shut down . God could not reach me . The lack of inspiration was on me . But as I came to grips with my addiction and got treatment , a lot of really bad negative , almost automatic , behaviors went into remission . It 's as if the underlying " static " has gone away , and I can hear what my muse has to say . I can recognize prompts and suggestions . I started carrying a small notebook with me again , and there is a legal pad on my nightstand . I sometimes have to pull the car to the side of the road and start making notes . I have a healthy respect for my muse and for creative ideas , and realize that ideas are fleeting . Never tell yourself , " Oh , I 'll remember it . " That usually doesn 't work . Of course , part of the reason I have found my muse again is because of the writing practice I 'm enjoying through response to these Writing 101 blogging prompts . I can 't wait to see where my muse takes me next . I was standing in line at the grocery store last Friday . Couldn 't believe I 'd chosen a Friday night to go . The store was so packed I thought it was a holiday weekend . I have become a lot more patient and tolerant over the years , but tonight was just a little rough . The lady in front of me in line kept backing into my cart as she talked to her daughter . There was a mother of three behind me . Her kids were about fed up with waiting , and kept demanding to leave . Then , suddenly , a baby in the next aisle started screaming . Her parents were very young . The father said , " Get her to shut up , will you ! " I noticed the customer at the register was having a difficult time coming up with enough money to cover her order . The cashier began taking items off the bill , one at a time , checking the new total each time to see if the customer could pay . So I decided to entertain myself while I waited my turn . One of my favorite pastimes is eavesdropping . I decided to ignore the craziness around me , zone out from the crowded store , and listen in on a conversation . I think this is one of the curses of being a writer . I read an article one time about listening to others for dialog ideas . The writer of the article said she shamelessly writes about friends and family . This has put her in hot water on several occasions . This is precisely what has stopped me from writing a memoir . How can I possibly be honest , open , and accurate without hurting or embarrassing someone ? I picked up on a conversation happening in the next aisle . Two young men were talking about a party they 'd been to last weekend at a local university . Have you read anything about the new " standard " of " yes means yes ? " It is a change in the law that is supposed to take all the mystery out of whether a woman wants to have sex with you in your dorm room after imbibing alcohol and stumbling into the elevator and wobbling down the hallway to your door . Before this new proposal , the standard was to stop if she said " no . " You were free to do anything you wanted to your date so long as she didn 't stop you . Silence was deemed to be implied consent . Of course , this has created a lot of problems . Depending on the amount of alcohol your date had consumed , having the presence of mind to know what was happening , and the ability to speak clearly , let alone say " no , " it was possible she would end up doing something she did not want to do . These two young men inevitably talked about Cheryl , a girl they 'd both taken to an off - campus apartment . Cheryl , they said , was smoking hot . She was brunette with dark brown eyes and a fabulous body . It seemed from the conversation that both men knew Cheryl before meeting up with her at the party that night . I was expecting their comments to be nice , flattering . No such luck . Given the things they were saying , it was almost as if they forgot they were standing in line at a grocery store . I , for one , like sex and I love women , but these two had me blushing . I couldn 't believe what I was hearing . It was inappropriate ! The longer they talked , the more it seemed to me Cheryl was in no shape to knowingly agree to a three - way sexual encounter . In fact , one of the young men said , " There certainly was no ' yes means yes ' ' " It seems he was familiar with the latest controversy concerning college rape . I took two steps back and peeked out over the top of the cold beverage cooler at the end of the check - out isle . I had to see these two guys for myself . Not that I would have recognized them . I was just curious what these obviously aggressive individuals looked like . On the surface , they seemed fairly harmless to me . Good looking men . Well dressed . Well groomed . The only thing noteworthy about them was the smirks on their faces as they talked about what they called their " tag teaming " of Cheryl . For some reason , that phrase made me wonder about Cheryl . What had she said when the two men started to undress her ? Was she too drunk to know what was going on ? Did she try to stop them ? And the biggest question on my mind : Was she too intoxicated to give consent ? Was I overhearing a conversation describing yet another campus rape ? I have never considered forcing myself on a woman . I am at a loss as to what causes a man to commit assault and rape on a woman . I think the incidents of campus rape have been on the increase . Unfortunately , one in four women in college today has been the victim of rape , and nearly ninety percent of them knew their rapist . I read a statistic that a woman is raped on campus every twenty - one hours . Alcohol use at the time of the attack was found to be one of the four strongest predictors of a college woman being raped . Of the college women who are raped , only ten percent report the rape . Unfortunately , college women are most vulnerable to rape during the first few weeks of the freshman and sophomore years . This explains why there has been a recent emphasis on safety officer training during orientation . As you can imagine , I wasn 't sure what to do with this information . I stood there waiting to pay for my groceries , wondering if I should call the police . The young men did not identify the college they were attending . There are three in the area . They had indicated in their conversation that there was no clear indication of " yes means yes . " Indicating that Cheryl might not have consented to having sex with them . As if it were an omen , I noticed a local police cruiser driving by outside as part of normal busy Friday afternoon patrolling . You might not believe me , but that simply made me think that there 's really nothing to report . I had heard of no news stories about a young college woman claiming she was raped . Christ , that 's right , I remembered . Only ten percent of the victims report the attack . Still , I have nothing to go on but the boasting of two college students in the grocery line . Just before loading my groceries onto the belt , I made a decision to contact the campus police at all three local universities and tell them what I 'd overheard . It seemed like a good place to start . The campus officers have good relationships with student organizations and victim 's groups , and can do some checking . I 'll leave them my cell number in case they stumble on something and need additional information . Like what the two young men look like . I felt like at least I was doing something , but I will admit it didn 't feel like enough . So when I got home that evening , I posted a long comment about the incident on Facebook - a warning I guess you should say . After all , if we all don 't start getting involved in these incidents , they are only going to increase . As a lay in bed later , trying to read , my mind went wandering , ending up in some fictitious setting . There , I saw Cheryl laying on a bed , passed out , and the two young men starting to take her clothes off . I pick up the phone and called the police . Nothing like this should ever happen on our college campuses . It was 1971 . I was twelve years old . My parents had moved to a small town in the Susquehanna River Valley in Pennsylvania known as Sunbury . It 's a third class city . It 's located in Northumberland County , and is the county seat . It sits on the east bank of the Susquehanna River , just downstream from the confluence of the North and West Branches of the River . It dates to the early 18th century . Interestingly , it was most likely Shawnee Indian migrants who first settled here . The city and state struggle economically , and are part of America 's Rust Belt . Dad bought a double home on North Fourth Street , just two blocks off Market Street , where the main business district is located . The home had a large side and a smaller side . We moved in to the larger side and rented out the small side . We also owned a large five - car garage complex at the back of the property , accessible by an alley . Dad put the family car in one of the garages and rented out the others to people in the neighborhood . I thought it was kind of cool that Dad was a landlord . Up to this point , we hadn 't had much money or property . Our house was quite spacious . We had a large front porch . The front door was original . It was solid oak with a huge piece of beveled glass . There were stained glass windows on both sides of the door . We had an old - fashioned solid brass mail slot . The main entrance opened up into a wide hallway . The staircase to the second floor was made of beautiful dark wood treads and a banister that winded around at the top . There was a set of french doors that opened in to the living room . There was original hardware on the doors , complete with pull chains to release the latches and open them . Our living room was huge , and had three big windows . There was a family room between the living room and the kitchen . Dad had laid bricks on the floor against the back wall and installed a wood - burning Franklin stove . On most winter nights , we had a nice little fire going in the stove . It was easily the most cozy room in the house . Old - style swinging doors with glass push plates separated the family room and the kitchen . We had a pantry / laundry room combination to the right of the kitchen . This room also served as a mud room , with a door leading out to the back yard . The back porch had a feature I found to be particularly cool . Part of the porch floor was a trap door leading to the cellar . Half of the basement was usable , and the rest was a stone wall dirt filled crawl space . My siblings and I considered this to be the spooky part of the basement . The upstairs consisted of three bedrooms , a small " office " off the master bedroom , and a very large bathroom . We had a claw foot ceramic tub with a cool drain plug in the form of a long metal tube that we would pull up to let the water out . There was a ceramic knob on the top that had the word " waste " written on it . The bathroom floor was original mosaic tile . There were ceramic tiles part way up the walls , and the top half of the walls were painted . We had a big bathroom window that opened in on hinges . Dad installed a screen on the outside so we could open the window on hot summer nights . The window looked out over a second - floor balcony onto the back yard . There was a nice cherry tree in the middle of the yard . My brother Mike and I would often climb the tree and sit there eating cherries . Mom would come out on the porch and warn us that we 'd get a belly ache . I recently moved back to my home town , and I drive by the old house several times a week . The hedges and the back yard are looking a bit scrawny . The garage building is starting to collapse . The cherry tree has been cut down . There are no longer any young kids running through the neighborhood laughing and playing . One of my Dad 's garage tenants , a retired high school teacher , moved out of her home across the street from our old house , and it 's now occupied by a woman and about seven children . The front porch is cluttered with trash and boxes , and the once - beautiful antique wooden front door was all but destroyed . Ernie Conrad 's Barber Shop has been torn down . My childhood sweetheart , Toni , and her parents have moved on . The auto parts store at the end of our alley has gone out of business . I considered buying the old house and renovating it , then moving in . It has a lot of potential . Mom could move back . My sister lives across the river . Unfortunately , there is nothing remotely attractive about the old neighborhood . I 'm reminded about the lyrics from Billy Joel 's " Scenes From An Italian Restaurant : " It was the warmest day so far this spring . There 's nothing like a walk in Central Park with the one I love , walking hand in hand , laughing as we talk about nothing in particular . It 's easy to lose yourself in the scenery and the emotion , warm sun lighting upon your face . It seemed as if the birds were there just for us , flying above our heads and singing . She started doing that thing where she bumps in to me on purpose , nudging me . I followed suit , gently crashing in to her . I squeezed her hand and pulled her close . We stopped . I bent down and kissed her . " I love you too , " I answered . " Let 's go to the pond and watch the children run their boats . " I was so happy when I learned that kids ran remote control boats on the pond like in the movie " Stuart Little . " We turned down to the left and continued on the walkway . Two squirrels ran by , playing . A pigeon cooed as it landed a few feet in front of us . As we came around a bend in the path , I noticed an old woman sitting on a bench knitting a red sweater . A bit out of season , I thought , given how warm it was . As we got closer , I was hit with a case of the butterflies in my stomach . There was something familar about this woman . I was about ten feet from the bench when I stopped in my tracks . I started to tremble . I couldn 't speak . I just started to cry . The woman looked up and gasped . Our eyes met with an immediate sense of recognition . I couldn 't believe it . My mother had left me with my aunt fourteen years ago . She had struggled with drug addiction for most of her life . She lost custody of me and my sister several times over the years , but could never seem to stop using . There were many times when I 'd come home and find her passed out , high , on the couch or the living room floor . I had always hoped she 'd be able to beat her addiction . When it got too bad , my aunt agreed to raise us . She left town . I didn 't see her for fourteen years . " It 's so nice to meet you , " said Margie as she reached out to shake my mother 's hand . Mom put her knitting down and stood up . She threw her arms around Margie . Then she turned to me and gave me a huge hug . I couldn 't stop crying . All these years and I run in to my mother knitting on a bench in Central Park . When she left , I thought I 'd never see her again . I 'll admit , I thought she was dead by now . She could not stop getting high , and I was sure she 'd died of an overdose . " Yes , " she said . She put her knitting back in her bag and zipped it shut . I took her hand and turned to face Margie . We just stood there for a minute , taking it all in . Then we all sighed in unison and started down the path back to Fifth Avenue . At first , when I read the details of assignment number eight for the Writing 101 blogging prompt , I thought there was no way I could do it . I considered deleting the assignment and moving on to number nine . Then I realized that this was an opportunity to make changes in my writing style . A chance to grow . So I went to a cafe in my mind . One I 'd visited before while working in New York City . I recalled the day I sat observing and journaling . Please enjoy the following . I got there early , hoping to have my pick of seats . I am not comfortable sitting too close to others . The waitress came to my table as I was opening my laptop . This was my first visit to Aubrey 's Cafe , so I asked for the WiFi password . I figured if I suffered a case of writer 's block , I could always go surfing . I ordered a vanilla latte and a chocolate chip muffin . I glanced around the cafe . There were seven others occupying themselves at their computers while sipping on hot beverages and munching on pastries . Some were pounding on their keyboards . Others were tapping . A few were serious , while others seemed relaxed . But one person grabbed my attention . She was crying while typing . I don 't think she was even aware that there were other patrons in the cafe . Of course I wondered what was bothering her . What could be that upsetting ? I remembered the day I was journaling at the Paramount Hotel in the City while waiting for lunch to be brought to my table . I had just gone through a divorce , and was in a negative mood . I got drawn in to what I was writing and didn 't see the waitress standing beside me holding a tray of food . So I understood how it was possible to zone out and be unaware of your surroundings . Perhaps this woman was reading bad news in an email . Maybe she stumbled onto a sad story in a blog . I found a blog post last week that brought me to tears . A woman wrote about her latest visit with her grandmother who was a resident at a nursing home . She had lost her sight , and was not able to read or watch TV . The granddaughter asked her what she thinks about all day . Does she reminisce about grandpa ? The grandmother said , " Yeah , I think about him from time to time . But what I think about the most is how you are doing . What your kids are up to . I think about our trips to the shore . Oh , I loved the beach . " I couldn 't help but think about my own grandmother who spent her last years in a nursing home . I teared up , and my bottom lip quivered . I opened up Word on my laptop and started to write . Believe it or not , I was so deep into it that I didn 't see my latte and muffin arrive . I 'm sure the waitress said something to me , but I never heard her . I just kept writing . By the time I finished what I had to say , I found myself sipping on lukewarm coffee . It was well worth it . I had composed a piece about my grandmother . I couldn 't wait to share it with my mom . Dad had passed away recently , and grandma was mom 's mother - in - law . Mom lost her mother when she was young , and grandma was like a second mom . In fact , grandma went along with mom and dad when they eloped to Maryland . Mom was only fourteen . Grandma signed for mom to get married , stating she was mom 's mother . I always thought that was cool for some reason . The young woman in the cafe wiped her eyes with a napkin , took one last swig of her coffee , and closed her laptop . She left money on the table and headed for the door . I noticed a man lurking outside and had a funny feeling things were about to get interesting . As she stepped out onto the sidewalk , the man came up to her with an angry look on his face . He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to him . He said something to her through gritted teeth . She mouthed the words , " I 'm sorry , " and stood there as if in complete submission . He made a fist and got in her face . No one on the sidewalk bothered to come to her aid . Most people walked around the couple . I just sat there watching and taking a sip from my now - cold latte . I have to share this wonderful piece . I 've read it twice now . I lost my father in December 2014 , and this writing brought it all rushing back again . It 's rather strange . . one day , you are talking with a person like there 's no tomorrow , trusting him / her with your secrets , throwing your head back and laughing , unaware of the uncertainties that the future holds . That day , you are telling him / her about how much they mean to you and of how you 'll remain friends forever , ignoring the very existence of irrational forevers . That day , the sunset doesn 't matter , for you know you will meet him / her again . But the next day , the person is gone . Just like that . There are no more pages to be flipped open . There are no more chapters . The story is over . The book is closed with a rather quiet sound . The lamp beside your bed flickers as you remember your cherished laughter . A cool breeze brushes past your face , drawing two lines against your scarlet cheeks . My father once brought up the topic of FEMA internment camps and what role they would play when the president declares marshal law . The topic intrigued me . I recently overheard two people discussing this matter . The following is a dramatization of that conversation in response to the Writing 101 blogging assignment " give and take . " " It can suspend laws . It can move entire populations . It can arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and can hold them without a trial . It can seize property , food supplies , and transportation systems . And it can even suspend the Constitution of the United States , " said Williams . " Well , FEMA allows the White House to suspend the Constitutional government on declaration of a national emergency . A series of executive orders was used to create FEMA . It doesn 't matter whether an executive order is Constitutional or not . It becomes law simply by being published in the Federal Registry . These orders go around Congress , " said Williams . " There are secret black helicopters that are reported throughout the country , mainly in the west in California , Washington , Arizona , New Mexico , Texas , and Colorado . They are flown by FEMA personnel . FEMA has been given the responsibility for many new national disasters such as forest fires , home heating emergencies , refugee situations , riots , and emergency planning for nuclear and toxic incidents . It works together with the Sixth Army in the west , " said Williams . " How is any of this right , though ? We live in a free country . It 's a government of the people , by the people and for the people , " said Robins . " We have to be prepared for insurgency . We have to maintain control . Can you imagine if the banking system collapsed ? Or if race riots broke out in all the major cities ? We have to have a way to ensure that the government can continue to operate . That the United States survives , " said Williams . " This sounds a lot like The Hunger Games , " said Robins . " I 've read online that the Marines will be in charge . That FEMA is only a front for these operations , and that in fact it would be the military and possibly the UN operating the internment camps , " said Robins . " What about the idea that citizens will be separated into who shall live and who shall die ? There will be lists of people , once arrested under martial law . The so - called FEMA Red and Black lists . When people come up Red Flagged , they will be arrested and taken to the camps , but they will be considered salvageable . They can be rehabilitated or re - educated . But people who are Black Flagged , they will be arrested and put to death . No questions asked , " said Robins . " And Christians see the writing on the wall . There are many more believers in the United States than you might think . And by God 's grace God is raising up more and more committed and informed Christians who see the new world order and the coming martial law tyranny for what it is in light of Scripture , and who are going to their commander - in - chief , God Almighty , for wisdom , and counsel , and direction , " said Robins . " And what about the 500 , 000 plastic air - tight coffins in the middle of Atlanta , Georgia . Apparently , the government is expecting a half a million people to die relatively soon , and the Atlanta Airport is a major airline traffic hub . Probably the biggest in the country , which means Georgia is a prime base to conduct military operations and coordination . It is also the home of the Centers for Disease Control . I don 't want to sound like an alarmist , but usually you don 't buy 500 , 000 plastic coffins just in case something happens . You buy them because you know something is going to happen . These air tight containers would be perfect to bury victims of plague or biological warfare , wouldn 't they ? " said Robins . " Yeah , well the lot they filmed for that Internet story is a Vantage storage facility in Madison , Georgia . Of the 900 , 000 or so in - ground burials in America each year , a small percentage of those people pre - arrange their own caskets and vaults , which Vantage holds at the storage facility until the appropriate time . According to the company vice president of operations , Michael Lacey , there are approximately 50 , 000 vaults in storage in Madison . It 's nowhere near the quantity they talk about on the Internet . Lacey also said the company maintains detailed records of product ownership , and it 's audited annually to insure all vaults are accounted for , " said Williams . " And I think you need to take a good , hard look at what 's really going on . I , for one , am not going anywhere when the UN troops come barreling down my street . I have plenty of fire power in my basement . They 're not taking me without a fight , " said Robins . |
Summer time , summer hair . Or , as the boys like to tell it , summer torture . My three little guys with much less hair than yesterday . He just looks sneaky , doesn 't he ? He is , trust me . I 'll take the happy smile , even with the averted eyes . And , well , this one is just plain silly . He was adamant that Mommy not get a good picture to post . I like this one anyway . It suits him . Never underestimate the power of kindness or of saying thank you to people who have been kind to you . With all of our recent issues with my truck lately , we 've been late to preschool pickup a few times . I always call , and I always apologize . And I know people understand that these things happen , but still . I am not that person . I 'm habitually early , that 's just who I am . Kids can complicate that , of course , but I work hard to be on time . It was difficult to know that my actions , however unintentional , were keeping people after their work day should have ended . And I kept trying to think of something to do that would let them know that I understood their time was valuable and that I appreciated what they had done to help us out . I tried to think of the things that used to make me happy when I worked outside the home , those unexpected moments of kindness from other people . It always came back to food ( that 's who I am , too ) ! And that made me think of the best chocolate chip cookies ever ( found on one of my favorite sites here ) . Who doesn 't like homemade chocolate chip cookies ? So , I baked a batch the day of our most recent late pickup . It was only five minutes late this time , mostly a result of being a one - car family and unexpected traffic , instead of the 40 minutes last time , when my truck wouldn 't start and the husband had to drive home from across town to get car seats and then go on to school to get the boys . The next morning , I dropped the kids off as usual and then pulled around to the little parking area in back . I walked the cookies inside ( with a little note thanking the staff for all that they do to help our boys ) and just handed them to the first person I saw , who happened to be Xander 's teacher . Her answering smile was enough to know that I had made a good choice . Just about every teacher I have seen since that morning has said thank - you and told me how much they enjoyed the cookies . A small gesture of thanks goes a long way . A good cookie doesn 't hurt either ! I also included the recipe in the beginner cookbooPosted by " Mommy , " my four - year old says , waiting for me to stop what I 'm doing and look at him before he continues . He needs my full attention , apparently . " I need to tell you somethin ' . " " Yes , Baby ? " I ask . " Someday , " he begins , looking down in that bashful way of his . " Someday soon we go to the beach ! " As he says this last part , he raises his eyes with hopeful expectation and his little voice rises with each word , as though he just cannot contain himself anymore . You see , last summer Grammy and her family took a trip to the beach . They invited Connor and he went along to become the life of the party . He remembers that trip . He usually names off every single person who went with them , as though reminding me which trip to the beach he 's talking about ( we sometimes go at Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa , too ) . But he knows this trip was during warm weather , you see . Kind of like what we 've had the last few weeks . So every day , at least four or five times a day , since the weather turned warm , we have this conversation . " Someday soon we go to the beach ! " Perhaps he thinks that if he says it often enough , it might come true . So , if anyone is going to the beach in the near future , I know a little stow - away who swears to be a good little boy . He does hope there is a pool though , because that 's equally as ( perhaps even more ) important than the beach . And big brothers . They do things like drive 35 minutes out of the way on a Sunday afternoon to come change your flat tire on the side of the road . ( And I 'm sure if I 'd been closer to home , I would say husbands . ) Yesterday the little guys and I were on our way to the lake to help celebrate Uncle Brian 's 35th birthday with the family . Of course , that would be the day that one of my truck tires decides to blow out , while we 're driving . The good news is that no one was hurt , my truck is just fine ( albeit with a very ugly , slightly smaller spare ) , and the day went on just as planned after an hour delay and a little help from my Dad and my brother . In all honesty , we have a lot to be thankful for after yesterday . On the ride down , my usually good little rider , Sawyer , decided to become Houdini . He managed to wiggle his arms out of the rather snug five - point harness on his car seat . He was still strapped in by the waist , but not as safely as he should have been . There 's not a lot of places to stop on the stretches of road we were driving when I noticed what he had done , but we happened to " miss " our cycle at a stop light . I hopped out and got him strapped back in correctly , about 20 minutes before the tire decided to blow . Thankfully , when the tire did blow , I was on a nice wide road with a large gravel right - of - way . I wasn 't making a quick phone call or messing with the kids in the back . I was just driving , not going as fast as I might have been and certainly going at least 20 miles less than I would have been on the Interstate ( which is the first part of our drive ) . There was no one behind us at the time , and it was easy to just pull it off the road . The kids were happily strapped in , and easily amused with a little juice , a few suckers and the portable DVD player until help could arrive . When I got out to take a look , it looked pretty bad . The whole side of the tire had pulled away . That particular wheel was actually resting on the rim , because there was nothing left of the inner tire at all . It could have damaged either Posted by It was hard to hold this one . He was playing one minute and giving Buster a big , random hug the next , all with the cutest expression on his face . He 's been pretty cute this week , he bumped out the other image ( also of him ) that I had been holding for today . Today all the little guys and I went out to the little league baseball fields to watch cousins Austin and Kyndal play their Saturday games . Grandma and Grandpa even drove up from the lake to watch , too ! And then the three oldest cousins ( Austin , Kyndal and Connor ) went back for a fun overnight visit to the lake . The rest of us will join them tomorrow for a birthday dinner for Uncle Brian ( and to get the kids back home in time for school ) ! Here are some of my favorites from the day . Cousin Austin winding up to throw ( wearing his Daddy 's old number , of course ) . Probably my overall favorite - the ball in the air and his face full of determination . And the follow through . And back to his regular position , catching for the team . Token shot of the little guys , who did very well considering how long we were out there and the warm temperatures . And yes , that 's another blue mouth for Sawyer . Ring pops definitely help . Connor was too busy playing to pose for pictures today , but he was there , too . And Kyndal wasn 't quite up for her game today , so we don 't have any pictures of her playing . Maybe another time . Do you recognize this chubby - cheeked baby ? It may not be who you think it is . This is Xander , before the baby fat melted away . And that makes this one Sawyer , who had a very bad reaction to his first experience with grass in the back yard . Pissed is how I would describe it . And the big man , pointing his stick at the camera . There were several good ones from this afternoon in history , and it was too hard to pick just one . ( April 25 , 2007 ) How much do I love to see that smile ? It 's so sweet and so natural . This morning was our in - home visit with Sawyer 's preschool teachers . We talked about the progress he 's made and the areas where he might still need some help . And all of us were happy to see the dramatic difference that only a few months of preschool have had for him and to think of the possibilities of next year . That smile , it used to be pretty elusive . You would sometimes go days or even weeks without seeing it . And those eyes , they hardly ever looked at you and never for more than a quick glance that would just as quickly dart away . Now that smile is almost always a tickle or a kiss away . And those eyes , those beautiful brown eyes , they will look directly at you and hold yours from time to time . That 's big . As we got ready to send the little guys to preschool , we had a lot of worries and fears about how the transition would go . But it seems to be going well . He has lapsed on the drop - off the last few weeks , mostly because he was out sick for almost a week right after Spring Break , but even that is getting better . And here are some other things you might not expect to hear . Sawyer likes to hug the girls in his class . I have never seen him walk up and initiate any contact with other kids , ever , if there wasn 't food involved ( remember the park incident ) . How cute is my little flirt ? A little boy in his class has befriended him and is always concerned on the days when he 's not in school . He kept seeing Xander , who is in the other class , walk past in the hallway and wanting to know why Sawyer was going to the wrong place ! Sawyer has even gotten to the point that he will let other kids play near , and occasionally with , him . His classmates all want to sit by him and play with him . They love it when he gets excited about something the class is doing , which isn 't always the case . Usually it 's some kind of singing or music that draws him in , and he loves the " calendar " section of the day , where they discuss the months of the year and the days of the week and ePosted by It 's so hard to be four . Really . Here is the extremely pitiful and pouting ( note the protruding lower lip ) Connor . He was mad at Mommy for making him come down off the deck , to PLAY . You know , after he had whined and begged to go outside and play on the play set from the minute we got home from preschool . And now , seconds later , it 's all better . Mommy was asking him to show her the pitiful face so she could take a picture , and that quickly turned into a game of " can 't catch me " with the camera and a fit of giggles . It 's so hard to be four . Today was family story time in Xander 's preschool classroom . Once a month , the teachers invite family members in for a special reading by someone from the community ( or sometimes just the teacher ) and a copy of the book is sent home to add to the child 's collection . Connor and I have made several of these visits , knowing that one of these days I might actually make it back to work and not be able to fit in all these little extra moments of seeing the kids actually at school . After story time , I had a chance to talk with both of his teachers . It seems Xander has made a good friend , a little boy named Jacob . He even said his name today , out loud , on the way back in from recess . He does that , from time to time , saying real words out loud that you may or may not hear again for months . Time will tell on this one , of course , but it 's the first name I think I 've ever heard ( or heard of ) him saying . And although it shouldn 't surprise me at all , it did a little bit . Jacob , like Sawyer , has autism . When it came time to register the twins in preschool , we decided to separate them so that Xander might have a chance to be around more traditional peers , more talkative peers . His biggest delay seems to be speech , without many of the social limitations that Sawyer seems to have . But of all the kids in the class to befriend , Xander picked the one who is most like his twin brother ( although his friend is more verbal ) . For whatever reason , Xander is comfortable with him and that 's just fine . He 's moving forward . Friends . Words ( names even ) , out loud . Listening and participating . Transitioning . All good things . As the one who loves to take pictures , I 'm rarely in them . One of these days the boys are going to grow up and ask what Mommy used to look like , so I decided to play with the camera 's self - timer today and take some shots with the boys . Here are my favorites . Love Connor 's expression . That one 's definitely a Mommy 's boy . I look a little drugged , which I am ( head cold ) , but his expression was too cute to resist . We both look sneaky in this one , which fits Xander 's personality perfectly . I was tickling him to make him laugh for the shot . And then there is the most elusive of the three , Sawyer . Some days he 's fine with the camera , other days he hates it . Today he just wanted to escape , although he was fascinated enough by the flashing light ( the self - timer warning ) on the front of the camera to actually look at it instead of away from it . If there is a downside to being the stay - at - home parent , it 's that you 're on duty 24 - 7 . Sure , there 's a lot of downtime or simply fun time , like afternoons at the park or the pool or whatever . But days like yesterday , when I could feel the onset of a sinus cold , are not fun . There are no sick days for Mommy . And , of course , I had to start getting sick the night before Connor 's preschool field trip , to the local children 's theatre to see a production about pirates . We had already paid in advance , and the show must go on . Luckily , Daddy needed to run an errand down town this morning , so he offered to take him . I 'm not sure I could have made it through a front - row seat to a loud children 's show with a pretty severe headache and ringing ears . I 'm not even sure I could have managed getting us there and parked with my fuzzy head . Option number two was to stay home with the little guys , get them dressed and fed and ready for school . That went pretty well , despite Sawyer 's recent aversion to being dropped off at school . And it would be nice to tell you I came home to rest in the empty house , but that didn 't happen either . The floors were quite disgusting after a week of wet puppy and messy boys , so I swept and washed them . I also took the same needy puppy for a much - needed walk ( it 's been raining here since Sunday morning ) . Essentially , the day must go on . Kids have to go to and from preschool . Meals have to be made . Whims gratified ( at least enough to keep the screaming at bay , for the headache , of course ) . Laundry and housework must be done . The one break I did take , a little siesta on the office couch ( protected by baby gates ) , resulted in chaos - couch cushions all over the floor , toys scattered from one end of the house to the other , and some shaken pastries . What , you ask ? Oh , my two little guys have discovered that by moving the trash can around , you can climb on top of it and reach things on the island bar in the kitchen . Like the container of pastries , which they proceeded to shake until they 're more like pastry bitPosted by " Mom , I have to tell you somethin ' , " my four - year old begins . I ask him what that might be . " I still love you ! " he says sweetly . And no , he doesn 't want anything . He just likes to hear himself talk , I 'm pretty sure . Because I hear this , and hundreds of other little things , all day long . The kid just cannot stop talking . And most of it is harmless chatter . Some of it , like this little conversation , is very sweet . A lot of it is the endless questions of why and how and when and where and who . He 's four , and he 's curious and talkative . That combination can make for some really , really long days . And I try really hard to be patient with him , though I don 't always succeed . But in the back of my mind , as I 'm nodding or answering questions for the thousandth time that day , I can 't help but think of his two little brothers and how I wish they would do the same . Maybe someday . . . Big brothers are jerks . Xander is reacting to his big brother " stealing " the toy golf balls he just rolled down the slide . The ones that he , of course , fully expected to pick up after he slid down himself . Have I mentioned this one is feisty and dramatic ? He is . Two beautiful days of warm weather and lots of outside play . One very tired little boy . Also bad , if you 're wondering . He 's in the time - out chair for wrestling with Xander ( meaning that he likes to pin him to the ground until he screams the house down ) . Warm weather means we spend a lot of our time outside these days . We swing and slide , a lot . We also play frisbee and golf ( if fighting over the white plastic golf balls counts ) . And Connor and I even play a little t - ball and soccer . We also have a lot of great snacks . Today it was ice water , icees , and suckers . Just another day in the life . . . Connor trying to blow the petals off the dandelion . Sawyer taking an ice water break from sliding . Xander handing me a dandelion to blow . It 's been a fun , busy day in our part of the world . Connor and I started off by dropping brothers off at their school and then heading over to the local park on the lake . We , of course , spent a lot of time on his favorite swing ever . We also went potty on a tree for the first time in public ( with Mommy anyway ) because the bathrooms were all locked ! Always nice , I know , but it couldn 't be helped . After about an hour at the park , we went to lunch at one of our favorites , Chick - fil - a ( which he always calls " Chick - a - say " ) . He also wondered aloud about Grandma and Grandpa coming to meet with us , since we met there last time they were in town . What a memory that kid has ! Then we went back to the house for the last half an hour that brothers were in school to give Buster a much - needed walk . Connor actually ended up staying at the house , " helping " Daddy , who was home on his lunch break . And that worked out to my advantage , seeing as how the kid can 't walk more than 10 steps without saying " Shew , I tired ! " and trying to sit down . He can run around all day and play , mind you , but walking is a whole different story . But , I digress . We eventually went back to school to get brothers , windows down of course . The warm weather made that a necessity any time we were driving today . And seeing as how Mommy 's truck was ridiculously dirty and covered in dry flowers ( buds off the trees , I suppose ) , Connor and I washed Mommy 's truck after we got back home while little brothers enjoyed a movie and a snack ( three boys in the driveway on our busy road is a few too many for safety and they were a bit tired after being in school all morning ) . When the work was done , it was time to play again . We all spent several hours out in the yard , playing with our new Easter toys and other outdoor toys . The boys had on shorts and short - sleeves for the first time this year ! They even drank water in their sippy cups , which is definitely rare for them . Here are my two big boys , swinging all by themselves ( okay , with a little pushing from Mommy ) . It 's taken a loPosted by Matching little people . Xander , left , is fascinated by the ceiling fan . Sawyer , right , is an early television addict . It was on quite a bit , unfortunately , to pacify the 14 month old who was not happy to have these two new additions to the family ! ( April 21 , 2006 ) When the twins turned three , they aged out of the state program that provided in - home therapy and began the transfer process to the local school system ( where they get peer interaction , group therapy and teacher instruction for three hours every day ) . It 's only been about two months , and you can begin to see changes already . I especially see them in Sawyer . Two months ago , this picture would have been impossible . When he stopped looking directly at people , he also stopped looking directly at the camera . And that laughter , although it is sometimes completely random , today it was because Aunt Kelly was chasing him and tickling him in the back yard . There was a reason for that bright smile and that deep belly laugh . Better eye contact , both more often and for longer periods of time . Better decision making , albeit by pushing ( if he doesn 't want it ) or pulling ( if he does ) . Less tantrums , both in quantity and the length of time they actually last if he must tantrum . Walking up and hugging the girls in his class ( little flirt ) ! Participating in group activities , turn taking and transitioning . My , oh , my . There aren 't dramatic changes , of course . He isn 't suddenly speaking words or saying sentences . He still dances more often than he sits still , and he doesn 't show much interest in other people or traditional play . But there are small steps , little signs of progress . And they are so nice to see . One step at a time , one day at a time . . . The good news is that my truck is fixed again and it was relatively inexpensive this time ( less than $ 100 ) . The bad news is that we were a single - car family for two days , and that wasn 't fun . Daddy didn 't get much work done , Mommy was driving an even bigger and unfamiliar truck to drop off and pick up the kids , and the kids ( who , let 's face it , like their routine ) weren 't quite sure what to think about it all . Both of them kept walking up to my truck when it was in the garage ( and not starting ) . And after it was towed away ( which Connor got to see and loved , by the way ) , the little guys kept looking around the empty garage like they couldn 't figure out where it went . And even once they got used to getting into Daddy 's truck , Xander was still pretty pissed every time all five of us had to go somewhere , because he couldn 't see through Mommy 's head in the passenger seat . Sawyer , on the other hand , didn 't mind Daddy 's big head in the way . He just looked out the side windows and seemed content to take in the new view . And both of them enjoyed kicking us in the back , which I 'm pretty sure my Dad still gripes about from when I was a kid and we had a small car ! So , it wasn 't fun , but it could have been worse . At least the kids and I weren 't stranded somewhere when it decided to stop working . Their teachers were understanding that we were late for pickup the day it stopped working . And , we 're lucky enough to have two large trucks in the family , which means all three cars seats will work in either one . Connor is just in his booster in this photo ( from the back of Daddy 's truck ) , but the full car seat will actually fit , too . When all five us weren 't riding at the same time , he even got to ride in the front seat in his booster . He really liked that . And the tape measure , too . Big boy , indeed . We have a pretty serious problem of little boys pulling the couch apart every time you turn your back . Three bottom cushions come off the sectional , along with three throw pillows . They are constantly being turned into makeshift forts , houses and even trampolines . It drives Mommy crazy . With the economy as it is , and our single - income family , we 're probably going to have that couch for a while . I 'd prefer that it not be coming in holes any time soon . You know , like the leather ottoman that used to have a zippered storage compartment underneath . Did you notice the words " used to have " in that sentence ? One of my ingenious children ( I will not mention names , Connor Elias ) decided that particular piece of furniture made a great boat when it was turned upside down . His 45 or so pounds did not meet the weight limits of the ( cloth ) zippered storage compartment , so it tore into a giant hole and made all of the fabric hang down underneath ( until Mommy finally gave in and just cut it off with scissors ) . Now there 's no more compartment , just a big empty hole . That said , we 've been working with the boys about leaving Mommy 's couch alone . Their name stated in a loud , obviously irritated voice by Mommy is usually enough to get all of them scrambling either away from the scene of the crime or to shove the cushions back on any which way they can as fast as they can . Today it took a new turn . Connor had already been chastised ( and threatened with immediate bed time ) once this evening . The second time I saw him messing with the cushions , he was quick to cut me off before I could even get to the middle name . " I not do it , " he insisted , still shoving the cushion back on . " Xander pull cushions off . Xander bad boy , go to bed RIGHT NOW ! " he added , putting it back and letting it go . And there he stood , glaring at his younger brother ( who was , in fact , guilty as charged ) and Connor was looking as innocent as could be ( which I am inclined to believe , in this ONE instance ) . So what does he then do ? He proceeds to shout at his brother . " Xander - Posted by Connor checking out the inside of his " streamer " that he made at school . Sawyer ( with a lot of help from his teacher , I 'm sure ) made the smaller one . And the cross is , of course , from Connor 's preschool ( it 's in a nearby Christian church ) . Spring is in the air , and in the school curriculum . Connor brought home this one one day last week . A full week of artwork . Connor made the " lion " and the " lamb " as they discuss Spring weather in his class . The white paper with small dots ( actually marshmallows from Lucky Charms ) was a matching activity from Sawyer 's class . The red circle with white dots ( again marshmallows ) was part of Xander 's curriculum on healthy teeth and gums . And finally , the yellow abstract is Xander having fun with painting ( no help needed on this one ) ! The photograph is also of Xander , sent home by his teacher around Valentine 's day . Connor 's lion again . The red star is either a flower ( my interpretation ) or a wand ( Connor 's interpretation ) that Xander made in his class . And the shamrock is from Connor 's class , I think . We also made one at home for Sawyer 's class , but I don 't think this is it . The frog puppet is Connor 's creation from school . The flower / wand again from Xander . And the abstract painting ( that I think looks like a pretty fall tree ) is from Xander 's class . I 'm guessing he had a bit of help on this one , because his style is more color every inch of blank space with something , preferable a dot or a long swipe . There , that 's a much happier kind of post . I thought you might appreciate it after all the " fun stuff " of late . My four - year old is preparing for the big end - of - school year program at preschool . It 's a musical , like most of their performances . How do I know this ? Because he 's constantly singing . I will share with you a sample , just so you know we 're having a little bit of fun in our house despite the rain ! " The train pulls into the station , into the station , early in the morning . The itsy - bitsy spider up the water spout , down came the rain and washed the water spout . Our god is a big , big god . Big , big god . Big , big god . The train pulls into the station , early in the morning . Early in the morning . Ol ' roof time . " And yes , it 's all jumbled together like that . It 's shouted ( as opposed to , you know , actually singing ) , and it 's very monotone . There are no pauses , no breaks for changing into a different song . I have no idea what the train pulling into the station is about , though I believe I 've heard " Big , Big God " and the " Itsy - Bitsy Spider " before . And for those of you who have followed along for a while , you will of course remember " ol ' roof time " as his version of " all ' round town " from the childhood favorite " Wheels on the Bus " song . No wonder the twins like to cover their ears a lot . Can you blame them ? It 's been a rough couple of weeks . Sick kids . Tired parents . And of course , when it rains , it pours . The good news is that everyone seems healthy at the moment . The bad news is some of the important things that make our life work keep breaking . The washing machine is broken . Again . I average two loads of laundry every single day , so that 's not good news . The replacement belt we put on a few months ago is shredded again , which means the problem is more serious than something we can do ourselves . So we 'll probably have to call a repair technician , who will of course charge hundreds of dollars just to grace the doorstep , not to mention what we will be charged for the tech to actually stay and fix the machine . Did I mention that it was an expensive front - loading machine that 's only about five years old , which means it 's just out of warranty . Good stuff . And if that was not enough , my truck has decided that it doesn 't want to start . Again . About a month ago , Josh and I went on a much needed night out with Grammy offering to keep the boys . The truck randomly wouldn 't start after the meal . We had to call her assistant , Aunt Kelly , to pick us up ( who quipped - " What , did you have too much to drink ? " - which is pretty funny if you know us , since we 're not exactly big drinkers ) . The battery had just been replaced during a routine oil change ( it tested low in part of their routine checks ) , so we knew it wasn 't that . It randomly started up the next morning when Josh went back to check on it , so we drove it straight to the garage . They ran some diagnostics and replaced the alternator . Several hundred dollars later , we thought the problem was solved . Until today . It was time to pick up the little guys , who had managed to have their first incident free day of school in weeks . I helped Connor into his car seat and got ready to go . I turned the key , and nothing . The mysterious no start yet again . New battery . New alternator . The only thing missing is apparently a new starter or some new wiring that connects all of these essential piPosted by Three boys , in three different classrooms , at two different schools . I 'm not sure why I thought having them in school would make my life a bit easier , because it really doesn 't . It just means that some or all of us are in the truck a lot more than we used to be . And it means a lot more frustration when I make plans for the times when they 're supposed to be in school and , for whatever reason , are not . Today is Monday , which means Sawyer and Xander have preschool . Two classrooms , one school . Not too bad , right ? Not unless Sawyer decides he 's not feeling well yet again , which he did . He missed all of last week except for Monday , essentially giving him a two week break from school ( that one day doesn 't count in my book ) . So , when one of his teacher 's called to report him not doing well , Connor and I stopped mid - lunch and went back to school to pick him up . Luckily we had already finished our planned errands - a trip to the library for more Curious George ( and other assorted ) books and to the grocery store for the essentials like milk and bread . And when we got to school , Sawyer was , indeed , quite pitiful . He was warm to the touch and inconsolable even being rocked by one of his teachers her nice , quiet office . Of course , he calmed down a bit in my arms . We talked to his teachers for a while and then made our way back to the truck . We had 20 minutes before Xander would be dismissed ( though we could have taken him as we left , as the teachers offered to get him ready ) . I chose to leave him in class , as he was having a good day and enjoying himself . We went to the truck where Connor finished what was left of his ham sandwich ( we just brought his lunch with us ) . I found a few suckers in my day bag and passed them back to each of the boys . We were going to wait it out in the truck . And you know what , Sawyer was perfectly fine . He was calm and alert , looking around and babbling just like always . He didn 't want any of my offered juice ( emergency diaper bag stash ) , but he took his sucker and just sat buckled in his seat looking aPosted by Identical twins . A week of sickness ( and not eating anything ) for Sawyer has made them even more so . Points if you can tell them apart ( hint , the expressions give them away for us - one is more feisty , one is more focused ) . Two of the three playing outside on this pretty Saturday afternoon . This week has been the story of two little boys . It seems one of the three has been in a different place all week . One day it was Connor who was gone ( spending a fun afternoon out with Aunt Kelly ) . Several days it was Xander , who was away at school by himself . Sawyer has been sick most of the week , and absent from school every day since Monday . A large part of his days have been spent either napping in his room or resting on the couch . He has moments of energy and appearances of normalcy , but they are short lived , so far . We did take him to school on Friday for his Easter egg hunt , though his big brother did most of the hunting ( and hoarding ) of the eggs . While energetic and enthusiastic at school , he came home to take yet another four hour nap . It 's been a rough week , to say the least . The sun and warmer weather has finally returned , which is nice , since it actually snowed two days earlier this week ! Sawyer was still not quite himself , so I kept him home again , but this afternoon he came around a bit and I 'm even hopeful he might get to go to school tomorrow ( and actually enjoy his Easter party , too ) ! The little guys and I took advantage of Connor 's absence and did something we don 't get to do often anymore - we took one of our long , winding stroller rides for miles . Mommy has certainly missed the exercise and the peace that comes from these walks . It 's nice not to hear someone ( ahem , Connor ) complaining " Shew , I tired ! " every five seconds only to get home and proceed to run around for hours without stopping . Clearly it 's more about not wanting to walk than it is about being tired . But , I digress . The little guys and I got out for a few hours to enjoy this beautiful spring day . We took Buster on his short walk first , and then we did our usual route through the neighborhood where we live and the one next to it that 's still largely under construction ( probably about 4 miles all told ) . We even stopped by our favorite field and played for a little bit . Sawyer wasn 't up to much more than standing there and looking around , so we didn 't stay as long as sometimes . But still , it was a nice little trip . Nice to be out of the house and away from the television , and to see how pretty it is here in the early spring . Here 's hoping your day was just as nice . Aren 't I handsome ? That 's what he seems to be asking us with that look . Today was a special day for all the moms in Connor 's preschool class - it was " Muffins for Moms " day . All of the moms got to come in and have a special breakfast and receive a special handmade gift from their child . Connor is proudly showing off his flower picture frame of himself . There was also a butterfly stenciled card with more of the same flowers and his name ( sort of ) written inside . He starts off well , with the " CON " part , but he writes so big that the end gets very squished and hard to read ! You might remember a similar day not too long ago for dads , where Connor made another picture frame that said " I love you to pieces " that was decorated with puzzle pieces . Have I mentioned how much we love his preschool and his teachers ? We do . Today was also the school Easter egg hunt , where the kids all brought in filled eggs that were " hidden " ( aka dropped all over the floor in plain sight ) in the music room . The kids had a " counting exercise " to get their eggs . My son , of course , had to return a few after all was said and done . He had more than his fair share of 14 filled eggs - he was closer to 20 before I tossed a few back on the ground . And smart little guy that he is , he was discriminating as he picked up eggs . He bypassed a whole bunch of eggs , opting for some that were slightly larger ( more than half of his were this bigger size ) and also for the sports themed eggs ( little footballs , baseballs and soccer balls ) . After school , he was in for an even bigger treat . Aunt Kelly came over to take him out for the afternoon . They 're going to watch Monsters v . Aliens at the theatre , with popcorn and coke , of course ( since he refused to eat any lunch for me before he left ) . There also was talk of picking up a late lunch / early dinner and taking it to the park for the rest of this beautiful afternoon . It 's rough being Connor , let me tell you . Rough . Though still not 100 percent , the little guy is improving . He 's started eating a few things - mostly fruit snacks and marshmallows - but that 's better than nothing . He 's actually drinking apple juice again , as opposed to just sipping it and holding the cool cup against his head . And he was even well enough to request going outside ( and was even willing to swing by himself a few times in the presence of the camera ) ! Just look at that grin . Mommy loves it ( the grin , and that he 's willing to swing all by himself a little bit these days ) . He 's currently napping , which just goes to show that he 's not totally back to himself yet . There is energy at times , but there 's also still crashing . But it 's a whole lot better than Monday night or even yesterday . Hopefully he 'll be well enough to return to school tomorrow . When he feels well , he seems to really enjoy going . After yesterday 's misadventures , I 'll go with something a little more fun today . My four - year old is full of lots of random thoughts and directives . And yes , he expects all of them to be followed . That 's a product of being our " have suitcase , will travel " child ( usually with grandparents or other people who love him and spoil him ) . " I do that , when I get a lil ' bigger . " This is his answer to absolutely everything , especially if you tell him not now . He 's decided if he 's not allowed to do it when he wants to , then perhaps he must wait until he 's a little older and a little bigger . Today he said it as I was driving . As in , he 'd like to drive . " I do that , when I get a lil ' bigger . " " Someday Grandma and Grandpa get a big house , " he muses on our way home from the lake . I chuckle , because Grandma and Grandpa already have a very big house at the lake . But I also ask why , just because I 'm curious where this is going . " Then they put a big houseboat in the garage . " Ah , that explains it . You see , most of the boats on the lake this time of year are either fishing boats or houseboats . He 'd seen a lot on his visit and thought his grandparents needed to get one . But they can 't have one until they get a bigger house , so it will fit in their garage . You know , with their other boat and the cars and the truck . " I not picking my nose ! " he proclaims , completely out of no where and without being either looked at or spoken to . That would be the first sign that he is , indeed , picking at the sore he 's scratched to death on the inside of his nose and now has blood running down his face . " Hush , Louie . Hush ! " he shouts . " No bark ! " Clearly he listens to his mother sometimes . Because she 's been saying this a lot this week , as he barks at everything and nothing and drives the neighbors crazy ! " Not today , " he says , completely decided . We hear this one a lot . If he 's not ready to do something , even if it was not a request , he simply says it . " Not today . " " I do it by myself ! " This one is usually shouted in frustration . Whether it 's trying to take his cPosted by After a not so good day , Connor and I had a not so good evening . Tuesday is swimming lessons , so we packed his bag , loaded him into the truck and headed to the indoor pool ( about 25 minutes away in a neighboring city ) . We signed ourselves in , went down to the locker rooms to change and waited the last five minutes on the bleachers for class to begin . The first thing that appeared wrong was the that the kiddie pool was roped off with caution tape and completely empty . Still , we waited . There was another group of little kids in the big pool with life jackets , so I thought that would be the earlier class . And it was , but it was Level II . When their class finished ( about the time ours should have started ) , I checked with that lifeguard . She said all Level I classes would be cancelled until the kiddie pool reopened , and someone should have called us to let us know . Yes , that would have been nice . Especially since we 'd already driven out and had gotten a little boy dressed and ready to swim . She told us we could stay and swim in the big pool if we wanted , but it was not to be . I didn 't bring a swim suit , because I usually just stand on the edge of the kiddie pool and let him play on his own after the lessons . It doesn 't require me to be covered in chlorine for him to have a good time . He was not having one tonight , and was quite pitiful as we went to get undressed and go back home . He stayed pitiful until he fell asleep several hours later . Of course , this was partly our own doing . We decided to go wireless last week , meaning we cancelled our home phone which had long seemed pointless . And we 've not missed it , at least not much . The only downside is that I didn 't think about all the places that would only have our home phone listed , like say the swimming lessons form , and would be unable to contact us . I sent out the new contact info to friends and family , even to the school teachers , but I didn 't think about swimming lessons . It 's supposed to be a simple six week class - except that it hasn 't been . Spring Break was one inPosted by With Spring Break last week , we weren 't sure what to expect from our little guys going back to school . They did amazingly well . No tears or tantrums at drop off , good reports from their teachers on their first day back , and an afternoon of inside play at home ( despite the crazy weather that has it snowing here in April ) ! Josh has a busy work week , so I knew I was in for some long days this week with the boys . Last night was the first . He left yesterday morning before 7 and didn 't get home until almost 8 last night , about an hour after the boys were given their tearful baths ( Connor because he was in trouble and going to bed early , and the little guys because they don 't like winter baths ( dry skin issues ) ) and then put to bed . And that 's when things started to go from bad to worse . Sawyer woke up a few hours after going down with a fever and an ear ache and possible ear infection ( we 're guessing , since he kept messing with one of his ears ) . He was pitiful and miserable . Which means so was Mommy . He refused all attempts at medicine ( even his beloved Tylenol that he normally begs for ) and wouldn 't take any juice or water , either . I was in and out of his room for hours at a time all night last night until about 4 a . m . , when he finally managed to settle into some form of continuous , if not restful , sleep . Josh left for work before 7 again . And that meant I had three boys to get to two different preschools at two different start times . Even when everyone is feeling well , that makes for a long day . So I got up and got dressed . On my way down , I let Xander out of his room , as he was the only one awake . Then I got busy trying to get milk and dry cereal ready and let the dogs out into the snow for their morning business ( and dry them off before they came back in or drove the neighbors crazy with their barking ) . Sometime in the middle of that , Connor made his way downstairs to the couch . I went to check on Sawyer , who was still miserable and pitiful and restless , but sleeping . I got clothes for all the boys and took them downstaPosted by Running around barking at everything and nothing . Shadowing my every single move in the house . Running inside and out ( and getting wet , muddy paw prints all over the clean floor . Chasing each other and driving each other completely crazy . Terrorizing the poor little girl ( about Connor 's age ) - who has the misfortune to live behind us right now - every single time she sets foot in her yard . Stalking anyone who even thinks about getting some food from the kitchen . Apparently these things make you tired . And snore . And I thought toddlers were needy . After a week on the go with Grandma and Grandpa , we knew that he was tired . But he fought it hard and refused to nap yesterday , even after several attempts to read in bed and then " rest " a while . Instead , he fell asleep here , sitting up on the couch , at 5 : 30 p . m . Josh carried him up to bed , where he slept in until this morning , getting up at his usual time just before 8 a . m . Today the little guys and I traveled to the lake to visit with Grandma and Grandpa and to bring Connor back home from his extended Spring Break . Or , as he probably thinks , to steal him from paradise and take him back to the real world . He 's had more than a week of being the center of the world ( a role he likes , I assure you ) . The transition back will be rough . He will not understand that " no " does in fact mean " no , " that no amount of tears or pitiful looks will change that fact . He will not understand that every whim is not to be instantly gratified or that he cannot have every thing that his heart desires . He does not understand that he is not in charge . Essentially , life as he knows it is over . He really hopes Grandma is reading , and that she will come save him again soon . Or , at the very least , talk some sense into Mommy . |
My wife of thirty years died two years ago . Our three kids were grown and gone . I picked up the bag . Should I or shouldn 't I ? Shrugging , I attached the rubber hose to the tank and continued to toy with the bag . I attached the hose to the side of the bag . Now all I had to do was pull it over my head and zip it as closed as I could . Then … reach over and turn the valve . Four or five deep breaths and bye - bye , see you later , adios . I put the bag down and went over to my desk . Everything was good . I neatly stacked the papers in front of my monitor , signed places where I needed to sign and listed all my passwords . There was nothing on the hard drive anyone shouldn 't see . I didn 't want to answer but something told me it might be important . It was . " This is Hal . What 's up , Simon ? " " Hey ! Glad I caught you . " If he only knew . " Hal , I need an original signature on a form before I can finalize your rights to the game . Sorry man . " " Sure Hal . Take your time . It 's not like we don 't have plenty of it . See you when you get here . I 'll have Nancy show you in so you won 't have to wait . " " Hal ? Are you okay ? You look , I don 't know , depressed , I guess . I don 't normally say this to people but as I 've known you since the sixth grade , I think I can . You need to see somebody about losing Sally . It 's tearing you apart and has since she passed . Man , I can see it in your face . " " Listen . Do yourself a favor . Why don 't you wander down to Evangeline 's and have a cup of coffee . I want you to consider whatever it is you 're thinking about . Really think about it . Why don 't you go somewhere different for a while ? Head over to the coast . San Francisco ? Seattle ? Someplace green . I guarantee the change of scenery will do you good . " I nodded and left the building and decided Simon was right . I really wanted a cup of coffee … a last cup . Evangeline 's was on the corner . As I passed the newspaper box I glimpsed a bold headline : I shrugged . Didn 't need to read the rest . People were forever getting lost in the mountains here . But I hoped they would find whoever it was . Maybe I really did need a change . Every place I went here brought her back . I was overwhelmed with memories and I couldn 't seem to shake the despair . When I returned home , I took my suicide apparatus apart and stored the parts in different places in the garage . I realized that my biggest problem was that I retired after Sally died and mostly floated in my depression . As the day progressed I found I was feeling better . I took out a couple of suitcases and started tossing in mostly casual clothes . Before closing the suitcases , I took one last look around . Feeling a little light - headed , as if I 'd climbed too many steps at once , I opened her lingerie drawer . A whiff of her fading perfume floated gently up . Wiping a tear , I slammed it shut . I didn 't need this . Not now . But eventually , all roads lead to home . Sedona . Talk about a lovely town . With all the red rocks and rock formations around , it was a beautiful place . I desperately needed to move into something much smaller … mostly to escape memories . Over the next two weeks I looked at a number of places . Some so expensive as to make my eyes bug out at the price . Just about to give up and go to Phoenix , a place opened on the west end out against the hills . Major depression engulfed me like a thick , gray fog . For the first time in over a month I was ready to die . I bought a bottle of scotch . I sat in my living room looking out over the town with the unopened bottle in one hand , a gun in the other . The next day , I looked at my mountain bike hanging in the garage . I hadn 't ridden at all in a couple of years . I realized that hauling the bike around was going to be easier with a pickup than my Mercedes . As far as perfect Arizona days go , this had to be one of the best . Low 70 's , dry , brilliant blue sky . The trail I followed wasn 't too technical to start with as it meandered gently around boulders and cacti although it climbed continually upward . I was having the time of my life … no worries , no concerns , and I was alive . I was beginning a steep descent when I noticed tire tracks going off the trail down into a deep ravine . It was right in the curve and I hoped whoever biffed it was okay . I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye . A flash of blue ? Something . At the bottom of the descent , I stopped for water and looked back up the way I 'd come . It was a steep sucker and I 'd done well negotiating it . I thought I saw a flash of blue again up in some large rocks but then I decided I was wrong . I was still looking up there when I saw that blue flash again . I pulled the bike off the trail for the safety of anyone else coming down and started climbing up the ravine . I rounded a boulder and there , thirty feet further up was a girl , her leg caught between two large rocks . She wasn 't moving . Her lower right leg , just below her knee , was wedged between two rocks . The girl or woman , I couldn 't tell yet , was upside down , facing me . Her arms hung toward the ground , her helmet was crushed on one side . What I 'd seen was her blue jacket fluttering in the slight breeze . Quickly but carefully so I didn 't twist something myself , I climbed to her . I was afraid I was far too late to be any good . I felt her throat to see if she had a pulse . It was slow and steady . I was going to have to lift her upper body higher than the leg to extract her and it from the rocks . Thankfully , I was still in pretty good shape . I ducked below her so that her neck pressed against my chest . Gently and slowly I pushed up , raising her . She popped loose , causing me to fall backwards . I caught her in my arms as we fell to protect her from further injury as we crashed to the ground . I got her situated and took a quick look at the leg . It was definitely broken . " Uhh … " she said as she bit down the tip . She swallowed a couple of times . Letting go of the spout , she gasped , " Thanks . How bad am I , doc ? " " Looks like your right leg is broken . And I 'm not a doctor . " I had to smile . She was certainly pretty , in an ' injured female biker ' kind of way . " I haven 't looked for it . That 's secondary right now . There 's no service in this hole so I need to go up to the top . Will you be okay while I 'm gone ? " " Yeah , sure . Can … can I get more water ? " I gave her the backpack and hiked back to the top of the trail . The climb up made for shortness of breath but I did it and made the call . I enjoyed the rest of the ride back to where I parked . What a day , I thought , loading my bike in the truck . Great ride . I rescued a damsel in distress and felt better now than I had since before Sally died . I also realized I could think about her being gone without my heart flying up into my throat . Over the next several days I began trying to write , something I 'd wanted to do for years . I 'd had a couple of dystopian young adult / new adult ideas kicking around since I 'd read the ' Hunger Games ' books . But sitting inside wasn 't cutting it . I took my laptop and went down to the pool . I was deep into pounding the keys when a shadow crossed my table . Looking up I faced a good - looking woman , possibly in her mid - thirties . She had short , deep auburn hair , amazing gray eyes and a wide , beautiful smile . The woman was definitely curvaceous and about five - six or seven . She wore a dark blue bikini that was perfect on her . The only word that came to mind was ' hot . ' As in very . I shook my head . " Should I ? " She was on crutches . " I 'm sorry . Have a seat . " I pointed at the chair next to me . Sometimes , as Sally used to say , I could be thick as a brick . " Thanks . " She sat and stretched her right leg across the empty chair next to her . I saw the cast below her knee . An impish smile danced on her lips and her eyes sparkled . She set her bag on the table and leaned her crutches against another chair . " Look closely , " she said again . Trust me , I did . " Recognize me yet ? " Her voice was like liquid smoke . Throaty and sexy as could be . " Nice to meet you , again , Hal Williams . I 'm Sabrina Delgado . " We shook . I felt like a fool . I hadn 't been anywhere in ages where I could have met someone as beautiful as this woman and forgotten her . Just wasn 't possible . " Okay , Ms . Delgado , I really don 't remember you . Did I bump into your car at Safeway or something ? If I did I 'm sorry and I 'll pay for the damage . " She laughed again . " I saw you sitting here and at least I recognized you . I live over there , " she pointed about two doors down from my place . " I really can 't believe that the man who saved my life can 't remember doing it . I 'm the one with the , " she pointed at her right leg , " broken leg who no doubt would have died had you not come along . Now do you remember ? " Thick as a brick . Yep . That 's me . " That was you ? I 'm sorry I didn 't recognize you . I couldn 't see much of your face . The rest of you , well , I was busy trying to get you out of those rocks . " " Please , call me Sabrina . " She smiled brightly . " Other than my leg , I had some scrapes and bruises on my back and butt and a slight concussion . My leg has a simple break which is why I 'm now moving around . I hate hospitals which is a complete oxymoron . I 'm an orthopedic surgeon . " She laughed . " And you ? What do you do ? " " Yeah , widow . Three years ago my husband found out he had testicular cancer . He walked out in the desert and killed himself because he couldn 't live with it . " She paused . " Sorry . I realize that was too much information . On the other hand , he left me pretty well set and my practice is bustling . " We spent an hour getting to know one another before she had to go back to her place and rest . We decided to meet later . I 'd buy some food so she wouldn 't have to shop . " What did you bring ? " she asked later when I came in . She 'd changed into a translucently pale blue caftan . Made her look … ethereal , I guess , like some kind of an angel . As I sat the groceries down on her kitchen counter , she crossed between me and the setting sun , momentarily turning her caftan invisible . I honestly thought my heart would stop . She set dinnerware out on her deck table as I cooked steaks . While I was busy with the grill , she asked , " What would you like to drink ? I have wine , beer , Pepsi . " " That 's your game ? The one with the movies and novels ? The one that 's one of my all time favorites ? You wrote that ? " " But I 'm not telling all the story . It 's not been a bed of roses . A little over two years ago , I was attending an AA meeting . My wife and a friend of hers were t - boned by a woman running a stop sign at about seventy miles per hour . " I suddenly found myself choking up and took a deep drink to gather my wits . We finished eating quietly , the mood somber . Other than a comment about the game or biking , we didn 't say much more to each other . After dinner , I cleaned up while she sat on the deck . She yawned . " That 's probably best . I didn 't think this wine would wipe me out but it has . Thanks for the wonderful evening . " I bent and kissed her cheek and left . " Me too . Sorry about last night . I 'd taken a pain pill , no doubt a huge mistake . The wine finished me . Can I make it up to you tonight ? I 've had no alcohol and my leg 's tolerable today . " I almost yelled ' yes ! ' but reined myself in . " Well , if you 're up to it . How about I take you somewhere for dinner , if you haven 't eaten ? " She smiled widely . " Hi ! " Is it possible for a woman to become even more beautiful ? She managed it . Tonight she wore a soft , pale blue blouse and dark blue designer jeans . After dinner we drove up Oak Creek Canyon and enjoyed the crystal - clear desert air . The beautiful blue skies of the day faded to the black of night . At one point we stopped and looked the brilliant stars above . " Around ten . Say … I 've some excellent coffee here and I 'm made some fresh sopapillas . Care to join me for a light breakfast ? " Her sopapillas were delightful and filling . Our conversation hinted at things moving forward between us . She definitely looked good in her snug white short shorts and blue t - shirt . She cocked her hip and teased , " Why Hal Williams , I thought you were a gentleman . " Laughing at my perplexed look , she said , " You are ! And thank you for noticing . " " You were a good student . Ron , my ex , was all about him . " She blushed . " All he cared about was he 'd scored me , the college hottie . " " As a poor kid , I needed all the help I could get although I had a couple of partial scholarships . " She stopped and stared out into the distance . " I guess what I did with him makes me a whore . I had sex for money … his … and would do almost anything he suggested if it would keep me in school . I did things for him I am not proud of . " " No , I 've discussed this with my shrink , the one I needed after Ron 's suicide . I thought it was my fault he did it and , of course , it wasn 't . I 'm still dealing with it . " " I don 't care what you did before . You are here with me , right this second . And from right this second onward , that other Sabrina doesn 't exist . " Someone splashed into the cool , blue water of the pool below us . " Sabrina , please stop . I don 't care about any of that . Dry your eyes . To me you 're the incredible woman I pulled out of a ravine the other day . " My heart stopped dead in my chest . I know it did . I 've known this woman less than a week and she says that . Funny thing is that I was already feeling that way too . I offered her my hand . I never thought I 'd find another woman in a million years that could compare with Sally . I 'd done it in a week . Later , I was stirring my spaghetti sauce for dinner . She was wearing that pale blue caftan again , the one that made her look ghostly . My back was turned when she whispered , " Hal ? " Her voice sounded strange , breathless , I guess . I suddenly felt as if I had climbed a steep hill again . My chest constricted . I was short of breath . I … I couldn 't breathe … something was wrong . Terribly , terribly wrong . " … And finally , in local news tonight , the city of Sedona was stunned to hear that two of her citizens have been found dead . Noted software and game developer Hal Williams was found dead earlier today from an apparent suicide . And after a month of intense searching in and around the area , the body of noted orthopedic surgeon Dr . Sabrina Delgado was found this morning by hikers . They said it looked like she went off a trail while biking . Stay tuned for these developing stories . " Slowly I opened my eyes . I was lying on something hard and cold and no , it wasn 't my ex - husband . It was worse , if such a thing was possible . When I could focus , I saw white . I was surrounded by white . My confused mind tried to make sense of it . It couldn 't be my bed . I had blue striped sheets and it definitely wasn 't hard . It was cold , too . So , I wasn 't in my bed and I was not in a hospital bed , where was I ? I realized that I was the victim of a bad case of stupid . I had been up in the hayloft taking bales of hay off a trailer . I was in a hurry to get the hay in before this winter storm got worse and wearing the wrong shoes . Snow had blown into the open hayloft door and melted . The sill of the opening was wet and slick and I had slipped on the wet hay and fallen . How did I miss the trailer ? Didn 't know . I did know that I was a hundred yards from the house and I was in a whole world of trouble . The pain shot through me like a lightning bolt . I tried to push up with my right arm to see if I could figure out how bad off I was . It wasn 't a good idea . My right wrist was broken . As I tried not to pass out I realized that my hand was bent entirely the wrong way . Fighting for consciousness , I looked farther down my body . Right leg . Definitely broken mid - calf . I took a deep breath . I raised my left arm . It was good . Left leg ? Not so good . I 'd landed on a garden rake , one I should have put away last fall . My left calf was firmly impaled on several of the hard steel tines . I fell back , staring straight up into a blanket of white . Was this going to be my shroud ? Dead because of stupidity ? I remembered laughing with others on Facebook about people doing the stupid things people did . Karma had caught up with me . I wondered through my fog if other people were going to laugh at me for exactly the same thing . My name is Lucretia DiBartolo . ' Luke ' for short . My Dad had a terrible sense of humor and hung me with the name of a killer . Thanks Dad . But I couldn 't move . I could feel warmth where blood was puddling around my left leg and knew this wasn 't a good thing . Freeze or bleed to death . Great choice . I moaned out , " Gee , thanks Dad . " I knew it was useless to yell because there was no one on the ranch today but me . My daughter was in town with her fiancé , picking up her wedding gown . My son was overseas . The wedding was tomorrow . Shit . Mom in a cast . Wonderful . I wondered if I could get a cast to match my peach dress . My mind takes weird turns in dire situations . Who gave a crap if my dress matched my cast ? I needed to make that hundred yards first or it wouldn 't make any difference . Phone ! Of course . Gritting my teeth , I used my left hand to snake it out of my right back pocket . It was worthless . Now I 'm not a big girl at all but still , a fall from the hayloft onto an aluminum and glass phone wasn 't good and this phone was toast . Another mistake . I had been trying to make it a habit to put it in one of my breast pockets and close the button . What was the saying ? ' There is no try , only do ? ' Well I didn 't . I raised my head and tried to see through the whiteout . One hundred yards . Is that my epitaph ? One hundred yards but she wimped out ? I certainly hoped not . I had to take Dad 's advice , dead or not . I had to get to the house . I felt it getting colder and my jeans and barn jacket , warm as they were , weren 't going to cut it much longer . Slowly , I curled up , thanking God for all the crunchies I did , raised my left leg and smacked the rake handle . It fell out of my leg . I watched and waited a moment . I was bleeding but not gushing . A small miracle . I didn 't think I 'd bleed to death . " Right Dad . You ain 't out here . You died in a plane crash . In summer . So shut th ' fu … " I caught myself … " Just shut up . " To add to everything else , I was talking to a dead guy . Another elbow and knee combination . Repeat . I giggled . Like washing my graying hair ; wash , rinse , repeat . Elbow , knee , repeat . I told you I was losing it . A few more hard inches . Then a root . A ragged edge snagged my belt , stopping me dead . I screamed , or I thought I did , " Why is this tree here ? " Oh . I 'd planted it with my Dad when I was in the first grade . I felt myself beginning to lose it . My gloves were soaked . Was I going to lose fingers ? I worried about my right wrist and leg . How bad was it going to be ? I rested for a moment . After what seemed like days but was only minutes , I hoped , I looked back . The snow blocked my vision and I couldn 't see how far I 'd come . Damn . Somewhere out there ahead of me was the house , hidden in blowing snow . Well , I 've never been considered a sissy , so I pushed on . Pull with my elbow , push with my knee . I couldn 't feel my right arm now . You know ? No one ever tells you just how rough a yard can be . I thought mine was fairly smooth . Boy , was I wrong . There were sticks and rocks and more of those stupid roots . I was sure that I hit every single one of them . I made a promise to myself that if I survived this , I was going to haul in dirt and cover everything to putting green smoothness . I glanced back . I saw a short bloody trail that disappeared into the white . I think I 'd ripped my left hip open on something too . The snow thickened to the point that I couldn 't see beyond the end of my leg . Probably a good thing . There was a momentary pause in the blowing snow . I saw the driveway ! Almost there . Pull , push . Pull , push . I could see the steps leading to the kitchen . Thank God . Driving back from town , it was a good thing that I loved my girlfriend . The drive into town to pick up her wedding dress had been tough enough in the early part of the storm . Jeeze … we could have put the wedding off until next week after this storm passed . Besides her mom , it was just Linda , some mutual friends and me . Her brother was overseas and couldn 't get home . All my family was back east . They weren 't wild about me marrying some girl who lived on a ranch out in the middle of Nowhere , Idaho . At the moment , I was wondering why I was , too . I nodded . Two long hours on the road to drive five miles . Linda and her mom had the absolute best scotch and by god I was going to avail myself to some about three seconds after I got through the door . I might even take the time to pour a couple of fingers instead of slugging it down straight from the bottle . " Linda , " I looked at her , " I can see the driveway . Now , let me concentrate . Why you have this curve in it is a mystery . " She crossed her arms because she was getting huffy . Tension had been building between us . Both pre - marriage jitters and this seemingly never - ending , white - knuckle drive from town . He looked interesting so why not give it a try ? Henry Roberts looked to be in his mid - forties , tall with a good build . His profile photos showed him on a beach wearing baggy , multi - colored trunks and a nice tan . Additional pictures showed him standing in the snow with cross - country skis and wearing a bright red knit hat . His shoulder length , sandy blonde hair spilled out from under that hat . He had sexy curls , too . I kinda liked that . I hadn 't had a date in ages , although I 'd been told I was fairly attractive . I tried the on - line dating scene once , after my divorce a number of years ago . I found it a total waste of my time . Maybe on YourPlace I could meet someone in an entirely different setting ; get to know him and who knows ? I 'd heard of people meeting like this and actually getting married . I told him that I worked as a store manager for a chic boutique and loved biking and canoeing . Turned out he lived in the next town up the valley where he taught music at their local high school . He skied , hiked and kayaked . I wasn 't in a hurry to start dating , though , having been burned a couple of times before . When he suggested coffee , my children , well two of them , were excited for me . My twin daughters , fifteen , loved the idea of me dating again . My son , seventeen , was busy skateboarding and sort of dismissed mom dating as a waste of his time . We were going to meet at an Evangeline 's Bistro on the north end of my town . All day long I found myself more excited than I 'd been in a couple of years . As soon as I closed the store , I drove out to the coffee shop . I was a few minutes early so I went in and found a table by the window . The view was spectacular with spring in full force . The days were getting warmer and the nights were still a little chilly . It was one of my favorite times of year . I waited and did a little YourPlacing , chatting with my close friends around the country . After awhile I realized I was still alone . I checked my watch again and realized that my ' date ' was now thirty minutes late . This was not a good way to start a relationship . I messaged him and got no answer . I gave him another thirty minutes and if he was still a no - show , then screw him . Figuratively , of course . He didn 't and I left angry . When I got home , I kicked off my shoes , poured a glass of red wine , and then plopped on the couch . I hadn 't been stood - up since high school and it really pissed me off . Because of my red hair , or so I 'm told , I have a pretty good temper and at the moment it was running close to full tilt . I jumped up and got my laptop with the intention of unfriending this asshole . As I glanced at the mirror in the living room , a stranger looked back at me . That stopped me in my tracks . That woman had honey blonde hair and it was long ! What ? That certainly wasn 't possible . I 'm a blazing red head . Well , I was angry and tired and had been stood - up . Not a great combination to start with and maybe something from part of misspent youth was flashing back on me . Wouldn 't be the first time . I got my laptop , opened it , and went to my page . Strange , I thought , he wasn 't there . Not even in the Search YourPlace section . I worried . I was only thirty - seven and as far as I knew , too young for dementia or something . I returned to the couch and had a long swallow of my wine . As I thought about it , it occurred to me that maybe I was being played for some reason . Now I was really pissed . Why would anyone want to mess around with my mind like this ? I posted a couple of scathing comments about people who did that sort of thing , signed off , and had another glass of wine . I fed the kids , took a shower , and crashed . This was just too weird and maybe sleep would help . Next morning I found out that sleep had not helped . Something wasn 't right . I 'm busty , have a nice butt and excellent legs . Lord knows I work on them enough . To my immense surprise , my bras , all of them , were too small ! At least a full cup too small . I know my cycles and know that my breasts can go up half a cup once a month . It wasn 't that time yet . But my hair was red . Well , I was pushing forty so maybe hormonal changes were causing me to imagine things ? I held that thought until I pulled on my designer panties . They were too big ! What ? That definitely wasn 't right . The last time I wore them , exactly a week ago , they fit me perfectly . Now it was like they 'd jumped up about two sizes . So I pinned up the excess , growled at the kids , traffic , and life in general , and then went to work . I tried not to think about it . At lunch I received a message from Henry on my phone app asking if I wanted to try again . I am willing to give most people another chance so I replied with ' sure . ' Same place , same time . Same result . Knowing about kids trying to act grown up or men pretending to be women or women pretending to be men , I carefully scanned the cafe . The place was practically empty and nobody was paying the least bit of attention to me . Then I thought about trolls and stalkers . I checked the parking lot . Other than my car in front , the rest of the lot was empty . Everything was closed in the little mall but this Evangeline 's . I was being jacked around . When I got home , his account was there and a message apologizing for not meeting . Something had come up . Right . His wife , for instance ? She hugged me and didn 't make any comments about the fact I was two inches taller . I was six feet . My god . To think I 'd bitched since the eighth grade about being five - ten . But Holly didn 't say a thing . And my damn hair was now brunette . She didn 't say anything about that , either . Somebody was messing with me and I didn 't like it . Or maybe I was dreaming . Mushroom pizza before bed was always a bad idea . I took a shower and felt better but was still worried . I considered talking with Holly and Lorraine , her sister , about future care for me . Bob was with friends that night . I decided to pass on discussing this with the twins just now . I felt better after the shower so why scare them when it was obviously something else ? What , I hadn 't a clue . All kinds of terrible things went through my mind as I tried to sleep . Dressing for work the next morning , everything fit . My underwear was the right size , my blue denim skirt fit exactly right and I was back to five - ten . Maybe I 'd had some kind of weird reaction to something I 'd eaten after all . As my kids would say , I tended to keep things in the refrigerator until they developed intelligence . Dismissing it , I drove to the shop and went in ; the smell of all those flowers hit me hard . That night I sipped my rum and wondered about it . I hadn 't fallen at all most of my life . Well , once , and that was out of a tree when I was twelve . I 'd broken my arm but hadn 't hit my head . I 'd never been in a car accident and never had a bike crash . Besides , I always wore a helmet . Rum ? I looked at the glass and carefully set it down . I got up and realized my house wasn 't right . Where was that nifty little wine rack I 'd had for several years ? The one I 'd painted brick red ? My pot rack that hung over the island … that wasn 't there , either . Now I was becoming very frightened . I ran to the bathroom , just making the toilet … avocado ? Seriously ? And vomited hard until I was into dry heaves . Lorraine ran in and comforted me until I could stand and get into the shower . She helped me undress … all my underwear today was blue . Blue ? I distinctly remembered wearing pink to work . This stuff was see - through too . I don 't have anything that transparent because while I may look pretty hot , my underwear was always somewhat conservative . Hell , I was wearing a blue thong ! Turning , Lorraine stood there and looked at me , crying . There was intense sadness in her face as if facing some impending loss . I could suddenly see through her eyes . Wait ! Her body shimmered and faded . No ! The mirror above my dresser reflected … nothing . There was no reflection of me standing there , no reflection of me on the bed . Nothing . " Bite me Harold , " he said as he looked at the screen . " Mom and Dad won 't let me mess with programs like this at home . Besides , I liked her better tall with the big boobs . " " You perv , " Harold replied . " She looked good like she was . Well , I thought she was nice . You didn 't even make her ass look right . Let 's just delete all of it and start over . " |
My wife of thirty years died two years ago . Our three kids were grown and gone . I picked up the bag . Should I or shouldn 't I ? Shrugging , I attached the rubber hose to the tank and continued to toy with the bag . I attached the hose to the side of the bag . Now all I had to do was pull it over my head and zip it as closed as I could . Then … reach over and turn the valve . Four or five deep breaths and bye - bye , see you later , adios . I put the bag down and went over to my desk . Everything was good . I neatly stacked the papers in front of my monitor , signed places where I needed to sign and listed all my passwords . There was nothing on the hard drive anyone shouldn 't see . I didn 't want to answer but something told me it might be important . It was . " This is Hal . What 's up , Simon ? " " Hey ! Glad I caught you . " If he only knew . " Hal , I need an original signature on a form before I can finalize your rights to the game . Sorry man . " " Sure Hal . Take your time . It 's not like we don 't have plenty of it . See you when you get here . I 'll have Nancy show you in so you won 't have to wait . " " Hal ? Are you okay ? You look , I don 't know , depressed , I guess . I don 't normally say this to people but as I 've known you since the sixth grade , I think I can . You need to see somebody about losing Sally . It 's tearing you apart and has since she passed . Man , I can see it in your face . " " Listen . Do yourself a favor . Why don 't you wander down to Evangeline 's and have a cup of coffee . I want you to consider whatever it is you 're thinking about . Really think about it . Why don 't you go somewhere different for a while ? Head over to the coast . San Francisco ? Seattle ? Someplace green . I guarantee the change of scenery will do you good . " I nodded and left the building and decided Simon was right . I really wanted a cup of coffee … a last cup . Evangeline 's was on the corner . As I passed the newspaper box I glimpsed a bold headline : I shrugged . Didn 't need to read the rest . People were forever getting lost in the mountains here . But I hoped they would find whoever it was . Maybe I really did need a change . Every place I went here brought her back . I was overwhelmed with memories and I couldn 't seem to shake the despair . When I returned home , I took my suicide apparatus apart and stored the parts in different places in the garage . I realized that my biggest problem was that I retired after Sally died and mostly floated in my depression . As the day progressed I found I was feeling better . I took out a couple of suitcases and started tossing in mostly casual clothes . Before closing the suitcases , I took one last look around . Feeling a little light - headed , as if I 'd climbed too many steps at once , I opened her lingerie drawer . A whiff of her fading perfume floated gently up . Wiping a tear , I slammed it shut . I didn 't need this . Not now . But eventually , all roads lead to home . Sedona . Talk about a lovely town . With all the red rocks and rock formations around , it was a beautiful place . I desperately needed to move into something much smaller … mostly to escape memories . Over the next two weeks I looked at a number of places . Some so expensive as to make my eyes bug out at the price . Just about to give up and go to Phoenix , a place opened on the west end out against the hills . Major depression engulfed me like a thick , gray fog . For the first time in over a month I was ready to die . I bought a bottle of scotch . I sat in my living room looking out over the town with the unopened bottle in one hand , a gun in the other . The next day , I looked at my mountain bike hanging in the garage . I hadn 't ridden at all in a couple of years . I realized that hauling the bike around was going to be easier with a pickup than my Mercedes . As far as perfect Arizona days go , this had to be one of the best . Low 70 's , dry , brilliant blue sky . The trail I followed wasn 't too technical to start with as it meandered gently around boulders and cacti although it climbed continually upward . I was having the time of my life … no worries , no concerns , and I was alive . I was beginning a steep descent when I noticed tire tracks going off the trail down into a deep ravine . It was right in the curve and I hoped whoever biffed it was okay . I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye . A flash of blue ? Something . At the bottom of the descent , I stopped for water and looked back up the way I 'd come . It was a steep sucker and I 'd done well negotiating it . I thought I saw a flash of blue again up in some large rocks but then I decided I was wrong . I was still looking up there when I saw that blue flash again . I pulled the bike off the trail for the safety of anyone else coming down and started climbing up the ravine . I rounded a boulder and there , thirty feet further up was a girl , her leg caught between two large rocks . She wasn 't moving . Her lower right leg , just below her knee , was wedged between two rocks . The girl or woman , I couldn 't tell yet , was upside down , facing me . Her arms hung toward the ground , her helmet was crushed on one side . What I 'd seen was her blue jacket fluttering in the slight breeze . Quickly but carefully so I didn 't twist something myself , I climbed to her . I was afraid I was far too late to be any good . I felt her throat to see if she had a pulse . It was slow and steady . I was going to have to lift her upper body higher than the leg to extract her and it from the rocks . Thankfully , I was still in pretty good shape . I ducked below her so that her neck pressed against my chest . Gently and slowly I pushed up , raising her . She popped loose , causing me to fall backwards . I caught her in my arms as we fell to protect her from further injury as we crashed to the ground . I got her situated and took a quick look at the leg . It was definitely broken . " Uhh … " she said as she bit down the tip . She swallowed a couple of times . Letting go of the spout , she gasped , " Thanks . How bad am I , doc ? " " Looks like your right leg is broken . And I 'm not a doctor . " I had to smile . She was certainly pretty , in an ' injured female biker ' kind of way . " I haven 't looked for it . That 's secondary right now . There 's no service in this hole so I need to go up to the top . Will you be okay while I 'm gone ? " " Yeah , sure . Can … can I get more water ? " I gave her the backpack and hiked back to the top of the trail . The climb up made for shortness of breath but I did it and made the call . I enjoyed the rest of the ride back to where I parked . What a day , I thought , loading my bike in the truck . Great ride . I rescued a damsel in distress and felt better now than I had since before Sally died . I also realized I could think about her being gone without my heart flying up into my throat . Over the next several days I began trying to write , something I 'd wanted to do for years . I 'd had a couple of dystopian young adult / new adult ideas kicking around since I 'd read the ' Hunger Games ' books . But sitting inside wasn 't cutting it . I took my laptop and went down to the pool . I was deep into pounding the keys when a shadow crossed my table . Looking up I faced a good - looking woman , possibly in her mid - thirties . She had short , deep auburn hair , amazing gray eyes and a wide , beautiful smile . The woman was definitely curvaceous and about five - six or seven . She wore a dark blue bikini that was perfect on her . The only word that came to mind was ' hot . ' As in very . I shook my head . " Should I ? " She was on crutches . " I 'm sorry . Have a seat . " I pointed at the chair next to me . Sometimes , as Sally used to say , I could be thick as a brick . " Thanks . " She sat and stretched her right leg across the empty chair next to her . I saw the cast below her knee . An impish smile danced on her lips and her eyes sparkled . She set her bag on the table and leaned her crutches against another chair . " Look closely , " she said again . Trust me , I did . " Recognize me yet ? " Her voice was like liquid smoke . Throaty and sexy as could be . " Nice to meet you , again , Hal Williams . I 'm Sabrina Delgado . " We shook . I felt like a fool . I hadn 't been anywhere in ages where I could have met someone as beautiful as this woman and forgotten her . Just wasn 't possible . " Okay , Ms . Delgado , I really don 't remember you . Did I bump into your car at Safeway or something ? If I did I 'm sorry and I 'll pay for the damage . " She laughed again . " I saw you sitting here and at least I recognized you . I live over there , " she pointed about two doors down from my place . " I really can 't believe that the man who saved my life can 't remember doing it . I 'm the one with the , " she pointed at her right leg , " broken leg who no doubt would have died had you not come along . Now do you remember ? " Thick as a brick . Yep . That 's me . " That was you ? I 'm sorry I didn 't recognize you . I couldn 't see much of your face . The rest of you , well , I was busy trying to get you out of those rocks . " " Please , call me Sabrina . " She smiled brightly . " Other than my leg , I had some scrapes and bruises on my back and butt and a slight concussion . My leg has a simple break which is why I 'm now moving around . I hate hospitals which is a complete oxymoron . I 'm an orthopedic surgeon . " She laughed . " And you ? What do you do ? " " Yeah , widow . Three years ago my husband found out he had testicular cancer . He walked out in the desert and killed himself because he couldn 't live with it . " She paused . " Sorry . I realize that was too much information . On the other hand , he left me pretty well set and my practice is bustling . " We spent an hour getting to know one another before she had to go back to her place and rest . We decided to meet later . I 'd buy some food so she wouldn 't have to shop . " What did you bring ? " she asked later when I came in . She 'd changed into a translucently pale blue caftan . Made her look … ethereal , I guess , like some kind of an angel . As I sat the groceries down on her kitchen counter , she crossed between me and the setting sun , momentarily turning her caftan invisible . I honestly thought my heart would stop . She set dinnerware out on her deck table as I cooked steaks . While I was busy with the grill , she asked , " What would you like to drink ? I have wine , beer , Pepsi . " " That 's your game ? The one with the movies and novels ? The one that 's one of my all time favorites ? You wrote that ? " " But I 'm not telling all the story . It 's not been a bed of roses . A little over two years ago , I was attending an AA meeting . My wife and a friend of hers were t - boned by a woman running a stop sign at about seventy miles per hour . " I suddenly found myself choking up and took a deep drink to gather my wits . We finished eating quietly , the mood somber . Other than a comment about the game or biking , we didn 't say much more to each other . After dinner , I cleaned up while she sat on the deck . She yawned . " That 's probably best . I didn 't think this wine would wipe me out but it has . Thanks for the wonderful evening . " I bent and kissed her cheek and left . " Me too . Sorry about last night . I 'd taken a pain pill , no doubt a huge mistake . The wine finished me . Can I make it up to you tonight ? I 've had no alcohol and my leg 's tolerable today . " I almost yelled ' yes ! ' but reined myself in . " Well , if you 're up to it . How about I take you somewhere for dinner , if you haven 't eaten ? " She smiled widely . " Hi ! " Is it possible for a woman to become even more beautiful ? She managed it . Tonight she wore a soft , pale blue blouse and dark blue designer jeans . After dinner we drove up Oak Creek Canyon and enjoyed the crystal - clear desert air . The beautiful blue skies of the day faded to the black of night . At one point we stopped and looked the brilliant stars above . " Around ten . Say … I 've some excellent coffee here and I 'm made some fresh sopapillas . Care to join me for a light breakfast ? " Her sopapillas were delightful and filling . Our conversation hinted at things moving forward between us . She definitely looked good in her snug white short shorts and blue t - shirt . She cocked her hip and teased , " Why Hal Williams , I thought you were a gentleman . " Laughing at my perplexed look , she said , " You are ! And thank you for noticing . " " You were a good student . Ron , my ex , was all about him . " She blushed . " All he cared about was he 'd scored me , the college hottie . " " As a poor kid , I needed all the help I could get although I had a couple of partial scholarships . " She stopped and stared out into the distance . " I guess what I did with him makes me a whore . I had sex for money … his … and would do almost anything he suggested if it would keep me in school . I did things for him I am not proud of . " " No , I 've discussed this with my shrink , the one I needed after Ron 's suicide . I thought it was my fault he did it and , of course , it wasn 't . I 'm still dealing with it . " " I don 't care what you did before . You are here with me , right this second . And from right this second onward , that other Sabrina doesn 't exist . " Someone splashed into the cool , blue water of the pool below us . " Sabrina , please stop . I don 't care about any of that . Dry your eyes . To me you 're the incredible woman I pulled out of a ravine the other day . " My heart stopped dead in my chest . I know it did . I 've known this woman less than a week and she says that . Funny thing is that I was already feeling that way too . I offered her my hand . I never thought I 'd find another woman in a million years that could compare with Sally . I 'd done it in a week . Later , I was stirring my spaghetti sauce for dinner . She was wearing that pale blue caftan again , the one that made her look ghostly . My back was turned when she whispered , " Hal ? " Her voice sounded strange , breathless , I guess . I suddenly felt as if I had climbed a steep hill again . My chest constricted . I was short of breath . I … I couldn 't breathe … something was wrong . Terribly , terribly wrong . " … And finally , in local news tonight , the city of Sedona was stunned to hear that two of her citizens have been found dead . Noted software and game developer Hal Williams was found dead earlier today from an apparent suicide . And after a month of intense searching in and around the area , the body of noted orthopedic surgeon Dr . Sabrina Delgado was found this morning by hikers . They said it looked like she went off a trail while biking . Stay tuned for these developing stories . " Slowly I opened my eyes . I was lying on something hard and cold and no , it wasn 't my ex - husband . It was worse , if such a thing was possible . When I could focus , I saw white . I was surrounded by white . My confused mind tried to make sense of it . It couldn 't be my bed . I had blue striped sheets and it definitely wasn 't hard . It was cold , too . So , I wasn 't in my bed and I was not in a hospital bed , where was I ? I realized that I was the victim of a bad case of stupid . I had been up in the hayloft taking bales of hay off a trailer . I was in a hurry to get the hay in before this winter storm got worse and wearing the wrong shoes . Snow had blown into the open hayloft door and melted . The sill of the opening was wet and slick and I had slipped on the wet hay and fallen . How did I miss the trailer ? Didn 't know . I did know that I was a hundred yards from the house and I was in a whole world of trouble . The pain shot through me like a lightning bolt . I tried to push up with my right arm to see if I could figure out how bad off I was . It wasn 't a good idea . My right wrist was broken . As I tried not to pass out I realized that my hand was bent entirely the wrong way . Fighting for consciousness , I looked farther down my body . Right leg . Definitely broken mid - calf . I took a deep breath . I raised my left arm . It was good . Left leg ? Not so good . I 'd landed on a garden rake , one I should have put away last fall . My left calf was firmly impaled on several of the hard steel tines . I fell back , staring straight up into a blanket of white . Was this going to be my shroud ? Dead because of stupidity ? I remembered laughing with others on Facebook about people doing the stupid things people did . Karma had caught up with me . I wondered through my fog if other people were going to laugh at me for exactly the same thing . My name is Lucretia DiBartolo . ' Luke ' for short . My Dad had a terrible sense of humor and hung me with the name of a killer . Thanks Dad . But I couldn 't move . I could feel warmth where blood was puddling around my left leg and knew this wasn 't a good thing . Freeze or bleed to death . Great choice . I moaned out , " Gee , thanks Dad . " I knew it was useless to yell because there was no one on the ranch today but me . My daughter was in town with her fiancé , picking up her wedding gown . My son was overseas . The wedding was tomorrow . Shit . Mom in a cast . Wonderful . I wondered if I could get a cast to match my peach dress . My mind takes weird turns in dire situations . Who gave a crap if my dress matched my cast ? I needed to make that hundred yards first or it wouldn 't make any difference . Phone ! Of course . Gritting my teeth , I used my left hand to snake it out of my right back pocket . It was worthless . Now I 'm not a big girl at all but still , a fall from the hayloft onto an aluminum and glass phone wasn 't good and this phone was toast . Another mistake . I had been trying to make it a habit to put it in one of my breast pockets and close the button . What was the saying ? ' There is no try , only do ? ' Well I didn 't . I raised my head and tried to see through the whiteout . One hundred yards . Is that my epitaph ? One hundred yards but she wimped out ? I certainly hoped not . I had to take Dad 's advice , dead or not . I had to get to the house . I felt it getting colder and my jeans and barn jacket , warm as they were , weren 't going to cut it much longer . Slowly , I curled up , thanking God for all the crunchies I did , raised my left leg and smacked the rake handle . It fell out of my leg . I watched and waited a moment . I was bleeding but not gushing . A small miracle . I didn 't think I 'd bleed to death . " Right Dad . You ain 't out here . You died in a plane crash . In summer . So shut th ' fu … " I caught myself … " Just shut up . " To add to everything else , I was talking to a dead guy . Another elbow and knee combination . Repeat . I giggled . Like washing my graying hair ; wash , rinse , repeat . Elbow , knee , repeat . I told you I was losing it . A few more hard inches . Then a root . A ragged edge snagged my belt , stopping me dead . I screamed , or I thought I did , " Why is this tree here ? " Oh . I 'd planted it with my Dad when I was in the first grade . I felt myself beginning to lose it . My gloves were soaked . Was I going to lose fingers ? I worried about my right wrist and leg . How bad was it going to be ? I rested for a moment . After what seemed like days but was only minutes , I hoped , I looked back . The snow blocked my vision and I couldn 't see how far I 'd come . Damn . Somewhere out there ahead of me was the house , hidden in blowing snow . Well , I 've never been considered a sissy , so I pushed on . Pull with my elbow , push with my knee . I couldn 't feel my right arm now . You know ? No one ever tells you just how rough a yard can be . I thought mine was fairly smooth . Boy , was I wrong . There were sticks and rocks and more of those stupid roots . I was sure that I hit every single one of them . I made a promise to myself that if I survived this , I was going to haul in dirt and cover everything to putting green smoothness . I glanced back . I saw a short bloody trail that disappeared into the white . I think I 'd ripped my left hip open on something too . The snow thickened to the point that I couldn 't see beyond the end of my leg . Probably a good thing . There was a momentary pause in the blowing snow . I saw the driveway ! Almost there . Pull , push . Pull , push . I could see the steps leading to the kitchen . Thank God . Driving back from town , it was a good thing that I loved my girlfriend . The drive into town to pick up her wedding dress had been tough enough in the early part of the storm . Jeeze … we could have put the wedding off until next week after this storm passed . Besides her mom , it was just Linda , some mutual friends and me . Her brother was overseas and couldn 't get home . All my family was back east . They weren 't wild about me marrying some girl who lived on a ranch out in the middle of Nowhere , Idaho . At the moment , I was wondering why I was , too . I nodded . Two long hours on the road to drive five miles . Linda and her mom had the absolute best scotch and by god I was going to avail myself to some about three seconds after I got through the door . I might even take the time to pour a couple of fingers instead of slugging it down straight from the bottle . " Linda , " I looked at her , " I can see the driveway . Now , let me concentrate . Why you have this curve in it is a mystery . " She crossed her arms because she was getting huffy . Tension had been building between us . Both pre - marriage jitters and this seemingly never - ending , white - knuckle drive from town . He looked interesting so why not give it a try ? Henry Roberts looked to be in his mid - forties , tall with a good build . His profile photos showed him on a beach wearing baggy , multi - colored trunks and a nice tan . Additional pictures showed him standing in the snow with cross - country skis and wearing a bright red knit hat . His shoulder length , sandy blonde hair spilled out from under that hat . He had sexy curls , too . I kinda liked that . I hadn 't had a date in ages , although I 'd been told I was fairly attractive . I tried the on - line dating scene once , after my divorce a number of years ago . I found it a total waste of my time . Maybe on YourPlace I could meet someone in an entirely different setting ; get to know him and who knows ? I 'd heard of people meeting like this and actually getting married . I told him that I worked as a store manager for a chic boutique and loved biking and canoeing . Turned out he lived in the next town up the valley where he taught music at their local high school . He skied , hiked and kayaked . I wasn 't in a hurry to start dating , though , having been burned a couple of times before . When he suggested coffee , my children , well two of them , were excited for me . My twin daughters , fifteen , loved the idea of me dating again . My son , seventeen , was busy skateboarding and sort of dismissed mom dating as a waste of his time . We were going to meet at an Evangeline 's Bistro on the north end of my town . All day long I found myself more excited than I 'd been in a couple of years . As soon as I closed the store , I drove out to the coffee shop . I was a few minutes early so I went in and found a table by the window . The view was spectacular with spring in full force . The days were getting warmer and the nights were still a little chilly . It was one of my favorite times of year . I waited and did a little YourPlacing , chatting with my close friends around the country . After awhile I realized I was still alone . I checked my watch again and realized that my ' date ' was now thirty minutes late . This was not a good way to start a relationship . I messaged him and got no answer . I gave him another thirty minutes and if he was still a no - show , then screw him . Figuratively , of course . He didn 't and I left angry . When I got home , I kicked off my shoes , poured a glass of red wine , and then plopped on the couch . I hadn 't been stood - up since high school and it really pissed me off . Because of my red hair , or so I 'm told , I have a pretty good temper and at the moment it was running close to full tilt . I jumped up and got my laptop with the intention of unfriending this asshole . As I glanced at the mirror in the living room , a stranger looked back at me . That stopped me in my tracks . That woman had honey blonde hair and it was long ! What ? That certainly wasn 't possible . I 'm a blazing red head . Well , I was angry and tired and had been stood - up . Not a great combination to start with and maybe something from part of misspent youth was flashing back on me . Wouldn 't be the first time . I got my laptop , opened it , and went to my page . Strange , I thought , he wasn 't there . Not even in the Search YourPlace section . I worried . I was only thirty - seven and as far as I knew , too young for dementia or something . I returned to the couch and had a long swallow of my wine . As I thought about it , it occurred to me that maybe I was being played for some reason . Now I was really pissed . Why would anyone want to mess around with my mind like this ? I posted a couple of scathing comments about people who did that sort of thing , signed off , and had another glass of wine . I fed the kids , took a shower , and crashed . This was just too weird and maybe sleep would help . Next morning I found out that sleep had not helped . Something wasn 't right . I 'm busty , have a nice butt and excellent legs . Lord knows I work on them enough . To my immense surprise , my bras , all of them , were too small ! At least a full cup too small . I know my cycles and know that my breasts can go up half a cup once a month . It wasn 't that time yet . But my hair was red . Well , I was pushing forty so maybe hormonal changes were causing me to imagine things ? I held that thought until I pulled on my designer panties . They were too big ! What ? That definitely wasn 't right . The last time I wore them , exactly a week ago , they fit me perfectly . Now it was like they 'd jumped up about two sizes . So I pinned up the excess , growled at the kids , traffic , and life in general , and then went to work . I tried not to think about it . At lunch I received a message from Henry on my phone app asking if I wanted to try again . I am willing to give most people another chance so I replied with ' sure . ' Same place , same time . Same result . Knowing about kids trying to act grown up or men pretending to be women or women pretending to be men , I carefully scanned the cafe . The place was practically empty and nobody was paying the least bit of attention to me . Then I thought about trolls and stalkers . I checked the parking lot . Other than my car in front , the rest of the lot was empty . Everything was closed in the little mall but this Evangeline 's . I was being jacked around . When I got home , his account was there and a message apologizing for not meeting . Something had come up . Right . His wife , for instance ? She hugged me and didn 't make any comments about the fact I was two inches taller . I was six feet . My god . To think I 'd bitched since the eighth grade about being five - ten . But Holly didn 't say a thing . And my damn hair was now brunette . She didn 't say anything about that , either . Somebody was messing with me and I didn 't like it . Or maybe I was dreaming . Mushroom pizza before bed was always a bad idea . I took a shower and felt better but was still worried . I considered talking with Holly and Lorraine , her sister , about future care for me . Bob was with friends that night . I decided to pass on discussing this with the twins just now . I felt better after the shower so why scare them when it was obviously something else ? What , I hadn 't a clue . All kinds of terrible things went through my mind as I tried to sleep . Dressing for work the next morning , everything fit . My underwear was the right size , my blue denim skirt fit exactly right and I was back to five - ten . Maybe I 'd had some kind of weird reaction to something I 'd eaten after all . As my kids would say , I tended to keep things in the refrigerator until they developed intelligence . Dismissing it , I drove to the shop and went in ; the smell of all those flowers hit me hard . That night I sipped my rum and wondered about it . I hadn 't fallen at all most of my life . Well , once , and that was out of a tree when I was twelve . I 'd broken my arm but hadn 't hit my head . I 'd never been in a car accident and never had a bike crash . Besides , I always wore a helmet . Rum ? I looked at the glass and carefully set it down . I got up and realized my house wasn 't right . Where was that nifty little wine rack I 'd had for several years ? The one I 'd painted brick red ? My pot rack that hung over the island … that wasn 't there , either . Now I was becoming very frightened . I ran to the bathroom , just making the toilet … avocado ? Seriously ? And vomited hard until I was into dry heaves . Lorraine ran in and comforted me until I could stand and get into the shower . She helped me undress … all my underwear today was blue . Blue ? I distinctly remembered wearing pink to work . This stuff was see - through too . I don 't have anything that transparent because while I may look pretty hot , my underwear was always somewhat conservative . Hell , I was wearing a blue thong ! Turning , Lorraine stood there and looked at me , crying . There was intense sadness in her face as if facing some impending loss . I could suddenly see through her eyes . Wait ! Her body shimmered and faded . No ! The mirror above my dresser reflected … nothing . There was no reflection of me standing there , no reflection of me on the bed . Nothing . " Bite me Harold , " he said as he looked at the screen . " Mom and Dad won 't let me mess with programs like this at home . Besides , I liked her better tall with the big boobs . " " You perv , " Harold replied . " She looked good like she was . Well , I thought she was nice . You didn 't even make her ass look right . Let 's just delete all of it and start over . " |
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